Vital Conversation: How Can We Afford to Live in Victoria, BC?

Many spirited conversations took place at the South Island Prosperity Partnership’s Rising Economy 2022 conference, covering essential issues facing the people of Victoria, such as healthcare and housing shortages, the escalating inflation rate, climate change, and more. The Vital Conversation, hosted by the Victoria Foundation in partnership with Coast Capital Savings, was held following the release of the 2022 Vital Signs report, where the cost of living and housing were notably the top issues in Greater Victoria.   The discussion was built on the premise of “How can we afford to live here?” and provided an opportunity for some of the region’s brightest minds to explore many of the current challenges facing residents of Greater Victoria and the Gulf Islands.   We’ve shared some of the key points from the conversations below, and you can watch the entire Vital Conversation here. 

“Somebody needs to do something, and that somebody is us.” 

– Kara Udell, Executive Director, Capital Region Food Share Network Society

A Rising Tide Lifts All Ships 

Moderator Jimmy Thomson, former editor-in-chief at Capital Daily, set the scene by unpacking this idiom, “but the tide that’s rising in Victoria, the tide of private property values specifically, is more like a tsunami. Those who occupy the high ground may notice their ocean view just got a little more expansive. But for those of us in the lowlands, renters, and the unhoused — and young and ambitious newcomers — are drowning. Our homes are being carried away by the same prosperity that’s benefiting some of the wealthiest.”  Kelly Greenwell, executive director for the Quadra Village Community Centre, offered further commentary on the housing crisis, “we all know this is going on. It’s been wreaking havoc with so many lives right now in the region, and this is intensified by issues like rent evictions, rents out of control, mortgage rate hikes, radical changes to grocery costs and other necessities, and wage adjustments are not keeping pace with the rapidness of those changes. I’m not sure we can expect that they’re going to be able to pivot quickly enough.”  To address some of these concerns, the QVCC is working on a housing outreach worker pilot project with the City of Victoria and the Victoria Foundation, now in its second year. The project was developed in response to feedback from the community as concerns grew over their ability to continue existing in a rental market with few options and even fewer that were affordable. The program helps single adults and couples over the age of 18 (without children) who are at risk of becoming unhoused, or recently unhoused, gain access to necessary supports to help them with housing resources, applications, and more.  Kara Udell, executive director for the Capital Region Food Share Network Society, acknowledged the significant demand to live in the CRD, even before the pandemic. “It’s a beautiful place with an incredible community. People want to be here. When we started experiencing catastrophic levels of unemployment, disruptions in our food supplies, and rapid increases in our inflation rates, it quickly came to a point where this wasn’t sustainable. This isn’t okay; we need to do something about it. Our network is a prime example of the community trying to do something outside of global systems. When we started, we were a part of that. And everybody was trying to get what they could for their own organizations to try and meet the needs of their own clients. And then we came together with a better way to do this. We can share resources. We can streamline processes like bulk buying. And that practice can be applied to a lot of different industries and a lot of different essentials. But we have to work together. And sometimes working together isn’t easy. But there’s great opportunity in it.”  Sylvia Ceacero, executive director at the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness, shared that her organization “is here to not only ensure we have community engagement with our members but also to carry the voice of the community to government through our advocacy efforts. We have no choice but to continue to march shoulder-to-shoulder to catch all who are on the fringes and those who may end up on those fringes through no action of their own.” 

Households at Risk: Riding the Tide or Drowning in Debt? 

In the Greater Victoria Living Wage Report 2022, the living wage was calculated to be $24.29/hour ($44,208 annually per parent), an increase of $3.83 over 2021. This metric looks at the hourly wage required for two working parents to care for two young children, covering the costs of their basic expenses, including rent, childcare, medical needs, food, and transportation. Diana Gibson, executive director for the Community Social Planning Council of Greater Victoria, shared that the report “found that one in five households in Victoria is actually paying more than 30% of their income on housing already. As soon as a household is paying more than 30% of their income on housing, they become a household at risk.”  “One in five households in Victoria is actually paying more than 30% of their income on housing already. As soon as a household is paying more than 30% of their income on housing, they become a household at risk.”  – Diana Gibson, executive director for the Community Social Planning Council of Greater Victoria

Affordable Childcare? 

There is a strong effort from the provincial government to reduce childcare costs for parents in Greater Victoria. The 2022 Vital Signs report shared that the monthly average of childcare spaces funded by the Ministry of Children and Family Development on South Vancouver Island was 13,845, an increase of 3% over 2019-2020.  While funds have been brought into the system and investments are being made around wages, “it’s not enough,” said Greenwell. “The after-school care, summer camp, winter break camp, ProD daycare, all that sector of staff, their increases haven’t followed along the path being utilized with early childhood educators. The reality is that it’s creating a real labour crunch: childcare providers are having a hard time attracting enough early childhood educators to run programs, and when the early childhood education credential isn’t required, similar challenges in providing staffing are being created.”  “When spaces are hard to come by, and you are dependent on having your children in childcare to access and keep your job to improve your situation,” said Ceacero, “when those spaces are not available, many individuals have no choice but to stay with their children to ensure they are safe and taken care of. This prevents them from being available to the labour market, which further compounds the issue.”  “The province’s $10-a-day childcare program has made a difference,” said Gibson. “The living wage went down in 2019 because of that childcare investment, and this year, the only area where costs didn’t go up was childcare. However, childcare is still the third biggest area of household expenses. Although it is making a difference, we need more spaces and more action around staffing and we need more affordability for families. At the Rent Bank, we’re seeing one in three households coming in with children; these are households at risk of eviction, despite the initiative the government’s made. It’s not enough.”

Food Security 

Another critical metric shared in the Vital Signs report was that there were 131,000 visits to food banks in B.C. in 2021, an increase of 5% over 2019 (but less than the 20% increase seen nationally.) “The trends that we’re seeing,” said Udell, “are an increase of need in dual-income households; households that might not have historically been in a position to calculate whether or not they were able to access their next round of groceries or what they were going to do for their meals based on the implied stability of two incomes.  “The FoodShare Network is a network of over 70 nonprofit organizations in the Capital Region District. Together, our food programs feed over 10% of the city’s population every month. While there is a slight increase in the need for existing and longstanding community members, the real wave is coming from people who might not historically have had those struggles.” 

Finding Hope 

To end the session, an audience member asked the panel for a message of hope for youth:  “If the system that you’re stuck in is broken, step out of it, do something different. Look at what we can do to move forward and meet the needs of our community for us to thrive together collaboratively. And if the existing system isn’t going to work to move it forward, or if it’s going to be a slow process, then do what you can now as a community to change that.” – Kara Udell, executive director, Capital Region Food Share Network Society “We need those foundational investments to improve, and we need to break the stereotypes around laziness: that if people need assistance or core benefit, that’s somehow about laziness. We need to challenge those concepts.” – Kelly Greenwell, executive director, Quadra Village Community Centre “We need to empower young people with what I call everyday life skills, including budgeting and the soft skills required to obtain jobs and to live the life that you dream of. And there is another piece for those of us who are inching towards the end of our careers: we need to embrace young people coming into our workplace and make a proactive effort to intentionally bring them into our workplaces, mentoring and coaching them so that one day they will take our jobs and that they feel inspired to continue the work that has begun. There is a lot of hope. We just have to make space for it.” – Sylvia Ceacero, executive director, Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness “My hope stems from the most recent municipal elections. I saw this incredible amount of collaboration and positivity within the council candidates across all the different ridings and then a real mandate in terms of where the votes came: more density on housing, more bike lanes, and more climate action. It felt like a validation of what I feel is possible for our region.” – Diana Gibson, executive director, Community Social Planning Council of Greater Victoria

The Solution is Community 

While there is no panacea to address all of the concerns of an entire community, there are often impressive advantages when everyone works together for a common goal. “Everyone on this panel,” said Udell, “is a champion of collaboration and community action. When we approach significant systemic issues, like food security, in a community mindset, and we choose to act together, we can see substantial shifts. An example is our food rescue program, where over two million pounds of food a year are rescued and redirected throughout the community.”  Stay tuned for more information about upcoming actions and strategies inspired by the 2022 Vital Conversation, held during the South Island Prosperity Partnerships 2022 Rising Economy Conference.   Special thanks to the Victoria Foundation’s partner Coast Capital Savings for their support of the Vital Conversation series.