Dear Editor,
We’re in a time when affordable housing is scarce, tents are popping up in many areas around Richmond and construction is overcrowding the city with buildings that diminishes natural light.
So I wonder, how is it feasible to take property from a BC Housing complex?
Rosewood Village does need a facelift, many buildings do. So why is the solution to shrink the homes of the current tenants by approximately 200 square feet, and turn a suburban community into a beehive of highrises?
Why? To make room for 700+ more units. 700 that are not part of BC Housing. 700 that are slated for moderate, middle and market rentals. BC Housing is only slated for one-quarter of the plan.
The design itself causes claustrophobia. Similar to the crowding of new neighbourhoods throughout Richmond, yes, but most of the tenants in Rosewood live there because it’s not a concrete jungle.
The current tenants will be segregated into their own building while those with money will take over the rest of the property.
How many more people will that be? 1,000? 1,500? They’re expanding the city into the suburbs. And not for the low-income population.
This is not helping with homelessness or the affordable housing shortage. This is the rich taking from the poor and pushing them into a little box.
It will destroy the esthetic of the Blundell Centre community, and reducing the tenants to a small quarter corner of their home, a home for some of 35+ years, is nothing but greed.
It should be fixed up, or rebuilt, there’s no denying that, and, yes, there is space to add more buildings if it goes upward.
But it should continue to be subsidized BC Housing. There are more than enough market rentals.
Liam Becket
Richmond
**Editor's note: When asked in July, BC Housing said it was too early to determine what type of housing would be built and how it will be managed.
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