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October 19, 2007
REALTORS® Give Kudos To Expert Panel And Urge Governments To 'Get On With It'
“The City of Victoria Mayor’s ‘Expert Panel’ on the mentally ill and addicted deserves strong kudos from the business community for its analysis of our challenges. It also provides a sense of what we have to do to close the gaps in meeting housing and other needs,” says Bev McIvor, President of the Victoria Real Estate Board (VREB).
“As a number of organizations in the city now know, the VREB operates under a set of principles that includes ‘providing housing for all in the community’. Because of that, we’re happy that governments seem to be recognizing that adequate housing really is the key to better living for all in society,” McIvor added.
McIvor said the VREB would like all 13 local governments in the region to come together and address not only some of the challenges raised in the report, but also support a regional response to where the required housing should be located and how the funding formulas should work.
McIvor added that the VREB is calling on all municipalities to support a Capital Regional District (CRD) plan to establish a Commission that will deal with some portions of this challenge and get things moving. "The City wants to have a public participation session on November 19 on their report and that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean we can’t move forward with a regional framework to address a portion of this challenge,” said McIvor.
McIvor noted that on October 24 the CRD has an opportunity to pass a bylaw establishing a regional ‘Commission’ to address the overall question of homelessness. "We want this to move forward as it will provide some political accountability tied into the Regional Housing Affordability Strategy approved in March 2007," stated McIvor.
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