Housing Initiatives | City of Victoria

Everyone deserves a home that accommodates their needs at a price they can afford. The City of Victoria is working on several policies to address housing supply and affordability in our community.

Visit the City’s engagement platform to learn about current and upcoming engagement opportunities on housing.

Victoria Housing Strategy 2016–2025

The Victoria Housing Strategy provides guidance for housing policies and initiatives that meet residents’ needs. We are in Phase Two of the policy, building on Phase One and Council’s Strategic Plan which was adopted in July 2019.

The strategy includes 44 actions that focus on ways to:

improve affordability, stability and choice for renters
encourage new housing supply
encourage a range of housing options to meet the needs of residents
track our progress and improve the City’s housing policies and programs
try bold ideas to achieve new results

Read Phase Two of the Victoria Housing Strategy

View the 2022 Victoria Housing Strategy Annual Snapshot [PDF/263KB]

Read the 2022 Victoria Housing Strategy Annual Review [PDF/14.5MB]

Housing Reports

Victoria’s Housing Future

The Housing Future Report was commissioned by the City in 2020. This study was based on BC Stats and CRD demographic projections to determine the number of housing units currently needed, as well as those needed through 2041.

The report estimates that 111,299 people will live in Victoria by 2041. This means the City will need to build 11,3000 additional households between 2016 and 2041.

Read Victoria’s Housing Future Report

Annual Housing Reviews

Annual housing reviews are conducted by the City and compile housing data from the previous year. Annual Reviews are done to monitor progress made on the implementation of the Victoria Housing Strategy with data broken down by neighbourhood and compared to the previous year’s data. Data comes from monthly building permit reports, the Victoria Real Estate Board and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

The three most recent annual reviews are available below. If you would like a review for an earlier year, please email our Community Planning department.

Housing Needs Assessment

The City participated in the Capital Regional District’s (CRD) Housing Needs Assessment in 2020. The assessment was done in accordance with legislation requiring all local governments to complete a housing needs report by April 2022 and every five years thereafter.

Read the Housing Needs Assessment [PDF/5.2MB]

Key findings from the report include:

21 per cent of Victorians are in core housing need, meaning they live in a dwelling considered unsuitable, inadequate or unaffordable; this is higher than the CRD (14 per cent), B.C. (15 per cent) and Canada (13 per cent)
renter households reported incomes that were 45 per cent lower than that of owner incomes
as of 2020, there were 938 households on BC Housing’s waitlist for Victoria

Inclusionary Housing Policy

The City’s Inclusionary Housing and Community Amenity Policy is one of several tools to address housing affordability under the City’s Housing Strategy.

The policy encourages the supply of new affordable housing through the creation of inclusionary housing units. These are on-site secured rental or homeownership units that meet the City’s housing affordability targets, as part of new multi-unit or mixed-use strata residential developments.

Read the Inclusionary Housing and Community Amenity Policy

The policy also seeks cash contributions from small and moderately sized projects to the Victoria Housing Reserve Fund. Part of these contributions are also set aside for local amenity reserve funds.

In 2023, the policy was updated following a comprehensive review to ensure alignment of the fixed rate (cash-in-lieu) contribution targets for typical applications in relation to current market conditions.

Recent updates to the Inclusionary Housing and Community Amenity Policy include:

Reduced the requirement for onsite inclusionary units to 10% and expanded options to provide cash-in-lieu
Adjusted allocation of cash-in-lieu contributions so that 70% of contributions go towards community amenities and 30% of contributions are directed to the Housing Reserve Fund
Removed the requirement for an economic analysis for purpose-built rental buildings, except in extenuating circumstances

Rapid Deployment of Affordable Housing

To advance the rapid deployment of affordable housing, projects by non-profit, government or co-op housing organizations will no longer require rezoning or public hearings when they are consistent with the City’s Official Community Plan, applicable design guidelines and other key qualifying criteria outlined below.

Delegated Development Permits

Under the Rapid Deployment of Affordable Housing regulatory pathway, development Permits for qualifying affordable non-market housing are delegated to staff if:

applications are consistent with Design Guidelines previously approved by Council.
the project meets the City’s affordable housing definition.

Qualifying applications go to the Advisory Design Panel to provide additional design insight and feedback.

Increased Density for Affordable Housing Projects

Under the Rapid Deployment of Affordable Housing regulatory pathway, qualifying projects can build to the maximum density contemplated in the Official Community Plan (OCP) without a rezoning application or Council approval if:

existing zoning allows for the proposed residential use (e.g., multiple dwelling).
projects do not exceed the maximum density in the OCP as outlined in Schedule O of the Zoning Bylaw [PDF - 323 KB]. [PDF/2.3MB]

All projects looking to qualify under the Rapid Deployment of Affordable Housing need to meet either the Affordable Housing Development or Cooperative Housing Definition from the Zoning Bylaw and Land Use Procedures Bylaw.