Housing and affordability

• The requirement to build affordable units was cut in half

  In 2023 council took its inclusionary housing and community amenity policy, which was a policy, never a requirement, and reduced the share of affordable units it asks for from 20% to 10%. In the same decision it cut the cash-in-lieu contribution going into the Housing Reserve Fund from 70% to 30%.⁶ Both of those funds and units are the affordable housing.

• The new plan asks for half of one percent

  Victoria 2050 offers developers a density bonus where below-market units make up 0.5% of the floor area of a condo development.¹⁶ That is half of one percent, not five, and not the ten or twenty the earlier policy asked for. At that rate the City's own affordable housing target cannot be reached, and the numbers are not close.

• Rents went up through all of it

  CMHC surveys rents every October. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Victoria rose from $1,336 in October 2022 to $1,502 in October 2024.² Those are the figures our group worked from. CMHC has since published its October 2025 survey, so newer numbers exist and we would rather quote them once we have checked them ourselves than round up from memory.

• What a renoviction costs the person it happens to

  Council strengthened this in August 2026. Compensation for a tenant displaced by renovation now runs from five months' rent after five years in the unit up to twenty-four months' rent at forty years or more, plus $1,000 to $1,500 in moving costs depending on the size of the unit.³ The motion was brought forward by Councillor Stephen Hammond in 2025 and amended several times before it passed. The provincial floor, for comparison, is four months' notice and one month's rent.³

  We think that is a real improvement and we say so. The gap that remains is the return itself. A displaced tenant gets a right of first refusal on a unit in the new building, but at 20% below market rate, not at the rent they were actually paying. Follow that through for one person.

  A senior has lived in the same one-bedroom for over twenty years, paying about $1,000 a month. Her building is redeveloped. Her compensation is now substantial. When the new building opens she is offered a unit at 20% below market, and if a one-bedroom rents near $2,000 that is about $1,600. She was paying $1,000. The compensation is finite and the $600 a month is not, so it still ends the same way: she does not come home.

  The bylaw terms are documented. The $2,000 market rent is what our members report rather than a survey figure, so treat it as our estimate. The point does not turn on the exact number. Compensation is calculated from the rent she was paying, while what she must pay to come back is set by the market.

• Affordable units can be approved and then removed

  In 2022 Aryze Developments won approval for an eighteen unit townhouse project at 902 Foul Bay Road after agreeing to include four below-market ownership units. The following year the developer asked council to discharge that covenant, arguing inflation and construction costs had changed the numbers. Council agreed 5 to 3, and the four affordable units became market units. In their place the City took a minimum $60,000 contribution to its housing reserve fund.⁸

  Four homes somebody could have afforded, exchanged for $60,000 and a commitment that did not survive contact with the market. Our view: if an affordability condition can be renegotiated after approval, it was never a condition. It was a bargaining chip, and the public spent it at the rezoning stage.

• Demolition removes the affordable housing that already exists

  The cheapest housing in Victoria is old housing. It is also the easiest to knock down, and the plan favours demolition over conversion or extension because demolition yields more units and more profit. Steve Pomeroy's analysis of census data found Canada lost about eleven affordable rental homes for every new one built between 2011 and 2021.⁷ A city cannot build its way out of a hole it is still digging.

• Make affordable housing, and non-market rentals in particular, the first priority rather than a percentage bolted onto market projects.
• Require and reward keeping viable older buildings, favouring conversion and extension over demolition.
• Prohibit replacing affordable rental housing with market-priced housing.
• Close the return gap: a right of first refusal at the rent the tenant was actually paying rather than 20% below market, and bridge compensation until the new unit is ready.
• Upzone for rental, including non-market rental, until the affordable targets are actually met.
• Press the province to fund non-profit and co-op housing, including restoring the co-op program cancelled in 2001.

Sources

1. City of Victoria, Victoria 2050 Official Community Plan, Bylaw 25-045, adopted October 2, 2025. Official Community Plan
2. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Rental Market Survey, October 2022 and October 2024. The survey is conducted every October. Rental Market Survey data tables
3. "Renovicted tenants in Victoria will get more compensation", CHEK News, August 1, 2026, on the compensation scale of five to twenty-four months, moving costs, the right of first refusal at 20% below market, and the provincial floor of four months' notice plus one month's rent. cheknews.ca
4. "Victoria council needs to get serious about affordable housing", Times Colonist, on the 2023 reduction from 20% to 10%, the cash-in-lieu cut from 70% to 30%, and the 0.5% density bonus. Comment
5. Steve Pomeroy, "Filling the hole in the bucket", on affordable rental homes lost against new ones built, 2011 to 2021. Analysis

Waitlist counts for subsidised and supportive housing circulated with these figures but carried no source, so they are left out until we can attribute them. James Bay income and tenure figures were left out for the same reason.