Salt Spring’s outdated zoning could add 7,000+ more expensive houses in forests and rural areas—while the people who keep Salt Spring running struggle to find a home.

Many people are shocked to hear that our current Official Community Plan (OCP), if not amended, will allow developers to build more than 7000 new single-family homes on Salt Spring. Without changes to the OCP, we can expect that history will repeat itself, and these new homes will not be financially accessible to the current underhoused population or to our valuable workforce and their families. Rather, these homes will be affordable only to those with means, which often means new residents moving here for retirement or remote work.

The current OCP unintentionally prioritizes off-islanders over those who are already here, working hard to make a living to support themselves and their families. This doesn’t seem fair.

Worse yet, the current zoning allows these homes to be built almost anywhere on the island. On a quick read of the current Salt Spring Island OCP, the language sounds protective, but most of its environmental and housing policies are only recommendations—not requirements - that should be regulated by the Land Use Bylaws. And yet, the last comprehensive update of the Land Use Bylaws was in 1999, and they do not implement a substantial portion of the OCP’s intentions around housing or protection of the environment.

The OCP states that in 2007, the number of dwelling units that could be built on Salt Spring was estimated to be 8,150. Since 2007, approximately 700 units have been built, meaning the future opportunity for build is more than 7000 units (section B.2.1). Because zoning and mapping (found in the Bylaws) are decades old, the plan allows these additional homes to be scattered across mature forests, watersheds, steep slopes, and wildfire‑prone areas. Under the current zoning, developers can often build “by right” (meaning the Trust cannot reasonably say “no”) with little regard for ecosystem health, water limits, or climate risks like fire or flooding. To protect the island, these guidelines need to become mandatory rules, not suggestions.

Salt Spring Island is at a crossroads. Warming lakes, dry wells, shrinking forests, rising seas, and increasingly severe winter rains are all converging - but our policies continue to assume yesterday’s climate realities, not even today’s, much less tomorrow’s.

The Official Community Plan (OCP) —meant to guide sustainable growth—is outdated and out of alignment with climate and housing realities. It needs to be updated to ensure that new builds happen in areas that will be less impacted by wildfires and sea level rise. The new OCP needs to ensure that our fragile ecosystems are protected against any further degradation.

And the new OCP needs to limit zoning that scatters single-family housing all over the island - instead making it much easier to build more density around village centres like Ganges and Fulford. This rural sprawl comes at a great cost in terms of expensive infrastructure like roads, utilities, and emergency services, while continuing to fragment forests and disrupt the natural ecosystems.

Many talk about limiting the population in the OCP, which sounds like a good way to stop or at least slow development, but this is a dream, not reality. We live in Canada - an open society. We can’t pull up the drawbridge. We can’t start issuing visas to limit who can come to Salt Spring and for how long. However, our opportunity with the upcoming amendments to the OCP means that we can at least decide where and how new housing happens. This is the tool that most effectively limits negative impacts of future growth.

A first draft of a revised OCP will come out by May, and updated Land Use Bylaws will follow. Please let the Islands Trust know that we can best limit ecosystem impacts by steering development away from natural areas to those with existing services. If we fail to do that, we will continue to get the rural sprawl delivered by an OCP written almost two decades ago.

For more information on how you can make your voice heard, please find out more about the Salt Spring Island Local Trust Committee's public engagement process here.

By Transition Salt Spring’s (TSS) Advocacy Circle, which includes Mary Ackenhusen, Pam Tarr, Bryan Young, Jon Cooksey and Kacia Tolsma. TSS works to provide fact-based positions rooted in protecting the island for future generations through a balance between environmental and human needs in a changing climate.