Janion Micro-Lofts.

The business plan for downtown Victoria's 2012 Janion redevelopment project has come up in the debate about short-term rentals in BC. Its marketing blurb, below, seems to be selling neither long-term nor short-term rentals but pieds a terre:

Small spaces in urban places.

Inspired by small space living concepts in Europe and Asia, the Micro-Loft is a high-design, high-efficiency home that offers the best of modern living – in a space that makes perfect sense. Designed for amenity-rich urban environments, the Micro-Loft concept was developed to provide an accessible home ownership option for people who choose quality over quantity and believe that life can't be contained by four walls. The efficiency and affordability of a Micro-Loft simplifies life. They cost less, use less energy and require less maintenance. The modern, small-footprint, Micro-Loft lifestyle allows you to focus on the essentials. Whether you want to travel the world or walk to a coffee shop, the simplicity of Micro-Loft living decreases your costs and increases your options.

It is a bit perplexing, given this, that the Janion website's splash page is titled "Janion Hotel Waterfront Micro-Lofts," particularly as a Nov. 29, 2012, Western Investor article, "Developers aim small to score big," reported:

Stovell is confident a broad market exists for micro units. He said potential buyers include business travellers, parents wanting a home for their children at university, up-Island residents seeking a place in downtown Victoria and those who work downtown.

But it was obvious at the time that the micro-loft marketing pitch was a scam.

The article goes on:

Stovell expects the buyers of the small condos to be a mix of owners and investors looking to rent them out. Zoning even allows overnight rentals, he noted. [Presumably because Janion is located across the street from Swan's Hotel.]

The most interesting assertions are these:

Industry insiders have long held that the economic case hasn't existed for purpose-built rental accommodation because of high land prices, construction costs and the limited rent an owner can expect – even though the rental vacancy rate is low at around 2 per cent.

The article, in sum, exposes the fundamental contradiction explaining why for-profit housing developers cannot and never will build affordable housing, the only solution to which is constructing abundant, publicly financed, purpose-built affordable workforce housing managed not-for-profit.

Ever since 1993, when Ottawa struck financing social housing construction from its budget entirely, it has been obvious that – in contrast to Lester B. Pearson in 1965 defining Canada's primary issue as "the necessity for everybody to have a decent dwelling" – the purpose of housing in Canada is not to house people but to extract wealth Canadian workers create into the hands of financial predators.

Ottawa, the provinces, and every municipality in Canada's job, it seems, is to facilitate plunder by private-sector housing developers with the lie that building "supply" will make housing more "affordable." It never will, and small "investors" using condos as under-the-radar hotel rooms to pocket unconscionable profits, brought down to Earth by ad hoc changes to real estate "market" rules, have been jerked one way and then another lately, too, and ground up, along with Canadian workers, by the financial sector.

Meanwhile, in 2022, Canadian subsidies to the fossil fuel industry surpassed $15.6 Billion and Canada's five biggest oil & gas companies raked in $38.3 billion in combined profits, more than double their profits of $16.9 billion in 2021. By comparison, on April 7, 2022, Finance Canada announced its plan to make housing more affordable: $1.5 billion over two years, starting in 2022-23.

Money thrown away subsidizing wildly profitable fossil fuel companies would be much better used building social housing. "Used" because money loaned to build housing whether for-profit or not is paid back in monthly installments by the occupants of the housing that is built.

Canada's economy is being gutted from the inside out by financial predators, and politicians and media promoting the fantasy that building "supply" will make housing "affordable" facilitate their plunder. No one dares to stand up to them, and no ones dares to say: "The game is over. We will not protect your profits anymore."

The only way to make housing affordable is to build affordable housing. For-profit housing developers by their own admission cannot do this. Government can and did for many decades before capitulating to the finance sector. Now is the time to cut for-profit housing development loose and build massive quantities of social housing. All that is lacking is the political will to do so.