Arguments against mobile home park development don’t make sense
Re: “Councillors against mobile home park protecting our community”, (Nov. 5)
The arguments from the letter-writer don’t make sense. Since when does providing actually affordable housing constitute “money-making above all”? Do they not realize that if those three councillors had their way, it would guarantee that ONLY unaffordable housing would go there? The project has nothing to do with the red herring of “wealth accumulation”. If the developer was only about “money above all”, then luxury housing would have been proposed for it in the first place. The vote to downzone, had it succeeded, wouldn’t protect the community in any way, shape, or form. Protect the community from what, exactly? The developer could not put affordable housing anywhere nearer to Duncan, so this is the best we could hope for under the circumstances. What else is there to do besides make a whole new community or three from scratch someplace else in the middle of nowhere so that the land isn’t so expensive?
Homes have to be put on land somewhere, so this hyperbole of “abusing/destroying the land” over housing is not an argument. Presumably the letter-writer lives on land, and not in some floating castle in the sky, so that stance is hypocritical. If the developer shouldn’t build homes by the Chemainus River, then how about 30 storey apartment complexes in Duncan or Chemainus as if it was Downtown Vancouver? Maybe a ton of floathomes along the coast?
This concept that we need to “reduce urban sprawl” and “protect green spaces” exacerbates housing crises everywhere. Green space is fine, but to restrict so heavily that people can’t have places to live is downright short-sighted. If the letter-writer is so worried about “abusing the land”, then maybe we should start building underground housing. I wonder how many little apartments we could fit inside Mount Prevost or Mount Sicker.
Would the letter-writer rather solve the problem by somehow literally forbidding people from outside the area from moving into a community with a housing crisis? Or maybe give incentives for people to move somewhere that has no crisis?
April J. Gibson
Duncan