Dear Editor,
I want to thank all the people involved in the demoviction protests for helping the rest of us understand the enormous home displacement that is going on in Burnaby in favour of developing very expensive housing.
But there’s another aspect to demolitions that needs a light shone on it and that’s the huge number of perfectly livable family homes, many with secondary suites, that are being demolished to build motel-size single family homes.
We moved to Burnaby 30 years ago and settled in an older neighbourhood, a green street, that was populated by people of diverse incomes, vocations and ethnic backgrounds. In the last five years, we have watched one decent house after another be torn down and sent to the dumpster, not only creating unhealthy air pollution and unnecessary waste, but also depleting that type of housing stock.
I would like to see city council do a study of how much single family housing demolition has happened in Burnaby in the last 10 years, as well as consider a requirement that purchasers of land have to re-locate viable houses rather than turn them into garbage.
Further, it is interesting to note that Burnaby council is instituting yet higher fees for houses with suites to pay for increased sewage, water and garbage use. This seems blatantly discriminatory given that some new, large, single family homes that have, on average, six to eight bedrooms and as many bathrooms, do not have extra fees levied for this volume.
Where’s the fairness there?
Mae Burrows, Burnaby
