New figures from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation show Sidney ranks among the leaders in Greater Victoria in terms of new housing starts.
CMHC records Sidney with 211 new housing unit starts year-to-date, placing Sidney ahead of the region’s largest municipality of Saanich with 169 and Victoria with 177. Of those new hunting starts, 187 fell into the category of apartments, with the remaining 24 units falling evenly into the categories of single, semi-detached, and row housing.
This breakdown also offers a clue to the urban geography of Sidney’s new housing starts: its more dense, downtown core, where several major projects are underway, often directly opposite from each other.
Sidney’s numbers are impressive when held up against recent history. By way of comparison, Sidney recorded 182 new housing starts through all of 2019.
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Langford leads all municipalities in the region with 885 units, followed by Colwood with 260 units, followed by Sidney.
These figures underscore the status of the West Shore (which also includes View Royal and Sooke) as the region’s booming residential area with a total of 1,585 new units. Combined, Sidney, North Saanich (77) and Central Saanich (23) accounted for 311 new units.
Looking at the region as a whole, it reported 2,347 new housing, down almost nine per cent but ahead of the historical average of 2,276 between 1972 and 2019, according to the Victoria Residential Builders Association.
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wolfgang.depner@peninsulanewsreview.com