Positively Forward is pleased to announce the release of our draft Position Paper on affordable housing and invites your comments. Pathways to Affordable Housing on Salt Spring Island confirms that it is possible to provide more affordable housing while protecting our island’s fragile natural environment. The paper’s intent is to provide a useful tool to move our community towards addressing this challenge in ways that optimize the possibility of a successful outcome.
Click to download and read our report.
Importantly, the paper clarifies barriers to building more affordable housing here and suggests how to navigate some of these roadblocks. One proposal addresses a key barrier, funding, by asking the province to allow a property transfer tax to provide funds specifically for the creation of affordable housing, as has been done successfully in the Washington State San Juan Islands.
We all recognize the critical need for worker housing. Our Position Paper underscores how experience elsewhere has shown that relying on the private market through large-scale upzoning with no obligation for the provision of long-term affordability is not the path to meet that need.
Correction of entrenched misconceptions — such as claims that progress has been hampered by our current form of local government (i.e., the Islands Trust) or that we need to abandon the OCP policy allowing upzoning solely for the purpose of affordable housing construction — is a key principle underlying the paper’s research. We invite you to read Pathways to Affordable Housing by clicking on the image to the left. Send us your comments and suggestions.
Also, if you have not done so already, please sign our petition to preserve this OCP policy and ask your friends to sign as well at Change.org