What kind of housing are we building?
The lower mainland is always considered an expensive place to live and governments are saying they need to build “affordable housing” . The question is what does that mean. More and more condo buildings and rental apartment buildings being built in the lower mainland are advertised with all these great amenities including fitness rooms, recreation rooms and other common area spaces. Is that the best place to build these facilities?
If we are building the amenities inside the buildings and limiting their use to occupants in that building is this the best way to serve the community?. Many of these in building fitness rooms and amenity spaces are not used to capacity or even close to capacity. The other effect these amenity rooms have is municipalities are nto building community centres or parks for the local area based on the amount of people now in that location. Is this creating a more segregated population of people who only interact with other people who live in their building?. With the increase of people working from home and the buildings having these facilities, people no longer have a third place to meet and socialize with other people in their community. Housing was not designed for people to spend all their time in that location and not interact with others in the community. The less we interact with each other the less understanding and tolerance we develop for each other.
My request to the local governments is don’t approve developments with all these amenities. They take up valuable space that could be used for more units in buildings which will make housing more affordable and won’t create segregated communities. Instead, require developers to contribute to building community centres and outdoor spaces all people in the community can utilize which builds a better community in the long run. Everytime one of these developments are approved people who live in buildings without these services are being denied community resources.
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