Dear mayor and council,
I feel so exasperated by the negative changes to Richmond your council has overseen since I moved here in 1985. The destruction of the wonderful neighbourhoods we had is ongoing with mainly off-shore investors parking their money in real estate and greedy realtors and developers making a fortune in flipping property.
Many of us chose to live in Richmond because of the mixed age and type of housing in neighbourhoods surrounding an elementary school. This will soon be a feature of the past as families cannot afford to buy the houses and there is less and less rental stock available.
Now, the builders, realtors and off-shore investors have turned their avaricious intentions to Richmond’s agricultural land. Please do not allow more mini-hotels of more than 10,000-square-feet to be built on our precious, agricultural land.
I cannot believe anyone really thinks they are being built for the extended families of farmers! If this bylaw is passed, it will be another dark day in the continuing destruction of our community.
While I am trying to get you to look at what is happening to Richmond, I would like to also comment on the incredible lack of foresight and planning around developments, such as the one at Fantasy Gardens Lands. Traffic is already grid-locked for much of the day at the No. 5 Road and Steveston Highway intersection. What on Earth will it be like when the latest eight-storey apartment block is completed? And as for the difficulties of driving around the Oval and the apartments being built there, well, it is laughable if it was not so sad.
Once again, I beg you to think about what sort of negative effects your pro-development at any cost policies are having on Richmond.
Please act in a reasonable manner and keep the size of “houses” on agricultural land within the recommended limits of the provincial guidelines for the ALR.
Mary Phillips
Richmond
