Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Neighbourhoods need destabilizing

Re: “Council helped create affordability crisis,” letter, May 17.

Re: “Council helped create affordability crisis,” letter, May 17.

The letter-writer’s opinion that “trying to shoot down projects, scale back proposals or delay developments, as council has done for decades, is the cause of the [housing] crisis” is right on the money.

The remark of a senior city councillor — “In my view, if I supported this I’d be destabilizing the neighbourhood” — is, to me, code for discrimination and elitism.

I reside in a project that has increased the density and changed the face of Menzies Street in James Bay. In this rental complex live millennial singles who walk or cycle to work, millennial families with infants, middle-aged people and old. I’m 85. Are we destabilizing the neighbourhood? You betcha! We are also infusing it with enthusiasm and substantial economic benefit.

Kudos to the mayor and those members of council who voted for inclusion when they gave the nod to the proposed James Bay condo development.

They follow in the footsteps of a new royalty who welcomed a biracial person into the family, thus destabilizing the monarchy and the bluebloods of Britain. Vive la différence!

Rosalee van Stelten

Victoria