A New Approach to Lower Housing Costs: A Cooler, Cheaper Path to Housing
Greater Victoria is at a crossroads. Struggling with an affordability crisis and provincial mandates for Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing (SSMUH), we have been forced into a demolish and rebuild model that makes life more expensive.
This high-cost approach prices out families and destroys the natural cooling our neighbourhoods depend on. There is another way – one that protects our environment, infrastructure, and wallets. We call it Density Without Demolition (DWD).
The View Royal Climate Coalition (VRCC) officially put this roadmap on the public record this month through an open letter to provincial and regional leadership.
We are urging a pivot toward adaptive reuse – the internal conversion of existing houses into multiple units – as a primary tool for housing resilience.
The current trajectory of full-lot redevelopment is hitting a wall. High interest rates and a cooling high-end market have made luxury new-builds increasingly risky, while the tear-down path carries a massive urban heat island price tag and delivers housing that is unaffordable to most.
Narrow mandates risk hitting the same public trust barriers that recently forced Calgary to repeal its own city-wide rezoning framework. We are seeing a clear desire for more flexibility right here at home. Recognizing that rapid change can create uncertainty, Esquimalt council recently chose to step back from a proposed development moratorium in favour of hosting a proactive community workshop. This collaborative spirit shows that local governments are eager for tools that satisfy provincial housing targets while honouring community input.
Adaptive reuse provides exactly that balanced solution. By preserving the existing streetscape, we can achieve density that naturally aligns with neighbourhood character. As Bill Brown, Esquimalt’s Director of Development Services, recently observed, the township has already seen successful applications to convert single-family homes simply by utilizing internal dividing walls and separate entrances. “You can get a two-bedroom unit easily in 800 square feet,” Brown noted, demonstrating that small-scale multi-unit housing can be integrated gently without relying on bulky, high-impact redevelopments.
To unlock this potential, the province can remove the administrative entry barriers that currently make it simpler for a corporate REIT to demolish a home than for a family to internally divide one. The good news is, this model is already proven in heritage conversions like the Mayor Baxter Mansion or Abbott House in Vancouver. There is no reason why non-heritage homes cannot also be converted in a way that is sympathetic to their surroundings.
Internal conversions can bypass the disruptive utility upgrades required by new-builds. Avoiding these excess infrastructure costs helps reduce the overall financial burden on homeowners. Choosing DWD also preserves the embodied carbon of existing structures and prevents tons of waste from entering our overstretched regional landfill.
Critically, DWD is a strategy for climate survival. Provincial risk assessments identify mature tree canopies and deep-soil moisture as our best defences against record-breaking heat. Traditional redevelopment strips this green infrastructure away.
As Dr. Stephen Sheppard, Professor Emeritus in the UBC Faculty of Forestry and Director of the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP), warns, densification without controls risks losing the very assets, like soil and root zones, that will be crucial in a worsening climate.
To unlock this, B.C. must offer an alternative to designs that trigger total demolition. First, we should adopt a performance-based building code modeled after Ontario’s Part 11. This conversion code focuses on safety outcomes, like fire suppression, without the prohibitive costs of full-lot excavation. It already delivers over half of Toronto’s missing-middle housing.
We also need a Standardized Adaptive Reuse Catalogue of pre-approved engineering plans to bypass architectural fees. Beyond the physical builds, the province must provide the same legal scaffolding for Tenancy in Common (TIC) agreements and co-operative land trusts that it provides for rental housing through BC Builds.
This lets young people buy into the market jigsaw-style, pooling resources to adapt existing homes rather than being priced out of massive developments.
By formalizing these paths, the province can prevent the extraction of local wealth and provide needed community stability.
Density Without Demolition is the fastest path to affordable, move-in-ready units that keep our neighbourhoods cool. We don’t need to bulldoze our way out of a housing crisis; we just need the permission to use the houses we already have.
Linda Jeaurond
for View Royal Climate Coalition est. 2019.
VRCC is a growing group of residents who champion effective climate-related solutions to make View Royal and B.C. as resilient as possible against the future impacts of climate change.
Footnote:
This model aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities), Goal 12 (Responsible Consumption), and Goal 13 (Climate Action), by preserving the embodied carbon of existing structures and protecting the urban forests essential for climate resilience.
United Nations
THE 17 GOALS | Sustainable Development
Citations & References
Spring 2026 Housing Supply Report | CMHC
Demolish or refurbish – Environmental benefits of housing conservation
Annual BC Assessment highlights factors impacting Greater Victoria market
“There is a growing concern about the REIT-ification of real estate across Canada. Canadian tax law currently exempts them from corporate taxes as long as profits are divided between investors and some tax loopholes continue to shield investors from paying income tax on their earnings.”
Standardized Housing Designs Catalogue
Standardized designs arrive to help build more homes faster
Updated June 12, 2025
https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2024HOUS0164-001430
Calgary city council votes to repeal blanket rezoning | CBC News
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/council-blanket-rezoning-vote-9.7156717
Esquimalt mulls pausing new missing-middle housing projects – Victoria Times Colonist
Greater Vancouver Real Estate Market Data | Insights & News
https://rennie.com/intelligence
CALP | Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning
https://calp.forestry.ubc.ca/