The Salt Spring Shuffle and the Islands Trust

My partner wrote this to emphasize her set of experiences with struggling on Salt Spring Island as a worker. I greatly appreciate Maddy’s support in my election bid.

This was posted on the Gulf Islands Driftwood website and published in the paper on October 7th

This was also posted on the Salt Spring Exchange here on October 11th

During my almost six years living on Salt Spring, I have lived in a 10 by 10 “meditation hut” as a farm worker, a rental with weekend labour as a condition of renting, and staff housing that I would lose if I quit, which shared two toilets, one shower, and one laundry with ten people. My partner, Eric, has lived in staff housing, and a converted tool shed with a pull out couch, hot plate and outdoor bathroom, that also had weekend work as a condition of renting. We spent a year commuting between my house with a kitchen and his with a bathroom. Don’t get me wrong, we have been incredibly lucky. We always had good relationships with our landlords, and these situations for the most part ranged from tolerable to ideal at different points in our lives. Eventually, though most, if not all of these situations got messy, complicated, and left us feeling overwhelmed and unsure of our future. Many of our friends have not been so lucky, and lived through situations where they were exploited, where they were not safe, and where they were forced to live without basic amenities. Most of these friends have left the island.

As we grew and our lives changed, we faced a real hurdle when I wanted to leave my job to continue my plumbing apprenticeship. We wanted to move in together and have some luxuries, like an indoor place to take a piss. We wanted, like many renting islanders, to work our jobs and pay our rent and not have some weird complicated relationship with our landlords. We didn’t want to have to move every six months. What we longed for was not just housing, we wanted a home.

We had many conversations about leaving, like our friends before us, giving up our jobs and our community here to start new somewhere else.

We started attending and speaking at Islands Trust meetings. With meetings held during work days, and so many people feeling disenfranchised and hopeless, we were usually some of the only, if not the only, working renters in attendance.

We found that while no trustee or advocacy group was opposed to housing for our workforce, the proposed solutions were lacking. Government or non-profit funded guaranteed-affordable housing, while certainly ideal, doesn’t exist in close to the quantities we need, takes years to decades to come to fruition, and with nothing new starting and funding nowhere in sight, does nothing for the people who have already spent years on the BC housing wait list. Other options like co-housing, farm worker housing, staff housing, boarding houses, and ADUs with rentals conditional on weekend labour were often offered as solutions, but having lived in most of those types of housing, we saw them as what they are - ideal for some people for some amount of time, but too often temporary and complicated, leaving no room for life changes and growing families. They cannot be our only options.

We were tired of people making housing decisions for us that had no real grasp on the implications of those decisions. They hadn’t worked a full work week only to spend a day working for their landlord, leaving only one day as their own, to fit in errands, socializing, and rest. They hadn’t stayed in a job that was no longer working for them because they would lose their housing otherwise.They had no recent experience with the types of housing they advocated for and were at no risk of ever having to live in these types of housing. We found that even the most empathetic, caring, and well meaning people, just didn’t fully understand.

We were tired of hearing there is no money to house people in a place with such vast wealth. Tired of hearing that there is no land to house people with swaths of land being cleared all over the island for luxury homes. Tired of hearing there is no water for us while working on those homes and seeing the pools, ornamental gardens, luxury fixtures, and lack of water saving infrastructure.

We were tired of seeing our politicians tip toe around special interest groups hyper focused on slowing worker housing development, but unconcerned with the luxury sprawl we see still being built. Tired of being labeled developers because we wanted a place to live. Tired of the assertion that any housing solution but the slowest was throwing open the island to free-market development. Tired of the sentiment that housing our workers is at odds with the environment, and tired of the most vulnerable people disproportionately burdened with struggles in the name of “Preserve and Protect”.

That is why I, at a great inconvenience to myself, wholeheartedly supported my partner Eric G March’s decision to run for Islands Trustee. Ironically, a decision only made when we, with a great deal of help, were able to buy a house on the island. We could not fathom committing to four years here as renters with how often we had felt pushed out. We didn’t see anyone who represented those facing the housing insecurities we had experienced, so he decided to be the person who represented them. Finding a way to create homes for our workers isn’t an academic exercise for him - It’s about our friends and colleagues, our community, and our anxious, exhausted, not-too-distant-past selves. It isn’t just about keeping our stores, hospital, and ferries running, it’s about people who we love, and people we don’t know that are most likely smart, creative, caring, funny, or otherwise awesome.

I hope workers and renters will take the time out of their busy lives to cast their vote for him. I hope those comfortably housed and retired will also vote for him, for the exact same reason.

The ins and outs of being a trustee can be learned - and Eric has been learning a lot - but the true experience of the Salt Spring Shuffle can only be learned the hard way. He actually understands, and because he does, he has sacrificed more, cares more deeply, will work harder, listen more intently, and ask for better for the workers and renters of Salt Spring.

And if Eric loses, we will still be here, screaming into the void that is the Islands Trust, and moving on to whatever we come up with next to try to make this island a better place to live. Either way, I hope we’ll see you there.

A frog sits upon a compost bin, contemplating the inequities of our community