Last week’s editorial by John Gleeson about the lack of affordable rentals on the Coast was, I suspect, eye-opening to many citizens on the Sunshine Coast although it should not be.
The parity between housing and income is no news to folks who’ve spent the past several years advocating for better and more affordable living quarters for the working, under-, and unemployed poor. This is a sad state of affairs that affects every age group in the area.
Whether it’s young people struggling to get by on minimum wages, single-parent families living on income assistance, or seniors getting by on old age pensions — rents are either non-existent or too expensive.
A few years ago I wrote a series of stories about the state of seniors on the Coast. I vividly remember one of the women I interviewed reciting the difficulties she had finding a home. She had the barest of incomes to bargain with and the added negatives of a pet cat and a smoking habit (outdoors only, but she was honest). And while it’s easy to point fingers and say her hard luck was her own fault, I would point out that the fact she supplied both those details up front made her a decent person. Also, neither is illegal in our country. Finally she ended up with a house several kilometres out of town. She was one of the lucky ones with a working vehicle and a valid driver’s licence. In an area with limited public transportation, those assets are essential.
The part of this problem that makes me saddest is the idea of people who have their little piece of paradise and want to stop others from having theirs. They believe that any and all development is the work of the devil. I don’t. However, the day of single-family stand-alone housing is long past its due date. And yes, denser forms of housing should happen in all our back yards.
What I believe is a lot of the problem with low-cost housing comes with the buck passing of the senior levels of government. One only needs to look at the provincial and federal records for building low-cost housing on the Coast to see their lack of leadership.
