Last week, a group including VIATEC, Tourism Victoria, the Vancouver Island Construction Association and the region’s chambers of commerce released the results of a study on employee recruitment.
The study suggests that more than 87 per cent of businesses surveyed have had significant challenges recruiting employees over the past six months.
The leading reason is a familiar one. It’s the same topic that has dominated local dinner-party conversations for the past couple of years: The shortage of attainable housing is making it difficult to attract employees of all skill levels from outside Greater Victoria.
The numbers bear this out. Rental apartments are hard to find, with the regional rental vacancy rate declining from 2.4 per cent in 2013 to 0.5 per cent today. Buying is no easier. Since 2012, active listings on the MLS have trended down from 4,200 to fewer than 1,500 currently.
At the City of Victoria’s planning department, where I work, we spend a great deal of time looking not only at what is happening, but also why it’s occurring. Housing affordability is a complex issue, but at its core is some simple arithmetic.
Over each of the past five years, the city of Victoria saw 1,300 new residents call the city home. This created the need for between 600 and 700 new housing units annually to accommodate them. But we saw only an average of 450 units get built.
This annual shortfall ate into the vacancy rate and other available supply, but we’ve now reached a point where that cushion is no longer available. The only way to solve the problem is to increase the number of units entering the market to meet the demand.
The good news is we’re making some significant progress in doing just that. In 2015, the city of Victoria saw 640 units completed and 2016 saw 940 units added, well toward closing the gap in supply that we’ve seen.
But it’s not just the overall number that we’re concerned about. It’s important to balance owned units with rental. Victoria is a city of renters (making up 59 per cent of households), and new rental housing is key to future affordability.
In this area, current forecasts are also promising. A total of 2,006 housing units are under construction in the city of Victoria. Of those, 43 per cent are rental apartment units. A further 2,237 units are in the planning/approvals stages, with 48 per cent of those proposed as rental or affordable housing units.
In all, the city of Victoria is home to almost half of all the purpose-built rental units being developed in the region.
It’s good to see the private sector responding to the needs in the community with at least a portion of the housing that is needed to meet resident needs. But the market can’t do everything.
That’s why Victoria city council last year adopted its housing strategy, with initiatives to encourage more affordability in the new supply coming on stream and a specific focus on middle-income households. Recent initiatives include:
• Community-amenity policy that integrates below-market-rate units into larger market projects.
• Reduced fees and parking requirements for affordable-housing projects.
• Permitting secondary and garden suites across the city.
• Launch of a rental-revitalization study to maintain and enhance the city’s large stock of older rental housing developments.
• Developing a suite of neighbourhood plans that provide community input into the location and form of future infill development.
• Support for the regional housing-first strategy (which has also been supported by the province) as it aims to develop homes for residents of the region most in need.
Overall, the availability and affordability of housing in our region is a complicated issue with many facets, and it certainly isn’t something that the City of Victoria or any other municipality can address alone. That said, understanding and addressing the underlying supply issues at the heart of this housing crisis are one way municipalities can set the stage for the development of a more equitable and economically vital region.
Jonathan Tinney is director of sustainable planning and community development for the City of Victoria.
