The lead minister at Oak Bay United Church says she is surprised at the mean spirits rising up over the church’s plans to build affordable housing.
“I’ve been surprised at the some of the mean spiritedness,” Michelle Slater said Friday.
The church, at 1355 Mitchell St. at the corner of Granite Street, wants to build housing on its grounds.
“My concern over the whole process has been just how quickly some people can move to creating an adversarial environment,” Slater said. “That has never been our approach.”
Her comments arose after a week when professionally made lawn signs raging against the church clashed with clandestinely posted hand-painted signs.
Residents posting signs blaring “STOP Over Development by the Oak Bay United Church” woke to find their lawns also sporting hand-painted signs saying: “We support class-based segregation” and “I fear poor people.”
Slater said the hand-painted signs were not the work of the church and condemned them as “super unhelpful, unproductive and divisive.”
But she said she couldn’t help feeling a little personally attacked by the original signs and their explicit naming of Oak Bay United Church.
“This church has been here for over 100 years and throughout its history it has done what we are trying to do today, use the resources we have been given to serve the wider community that God loves.”
Since the fall, the church has been holding meetings with its neighbours over plans to renovate its 1.3-acre site to create an affordable housing complex. Suggested sizes range from 100 to 160 units.
The church property is zoned institutional and the official community plan calls for an increase in density for the area.
All church plans include saving the 1914 heritage church, seismically retrofitted in 2010. But outbuildings would be knocked down.
The result would be a new housing complex, a day care and a community garden.
The church has already received $500,000 support from B.C. Housing to complete the planning. B.C. Housing has also pledged to finance the project.
But so far, church plans have found little support in the neighbourhood. On at least three occasions, to little positive reaction, the church has displayed conceptual drawings by architects, with the number of storeys ranging from four to five.
One website erected by a group calling itself “Concerned Citizens Network; Oak Bay” is filled with criticisms.
“The proposal does not come anywhere near respecting the character of the neighbourhood and is totally inappropriate,” states one line.
But the website doesn’t display any names, and it’s unclear who is running it.
Slater said the church has reached out to people they know have raised concerns to correct inaccurate information and unfounded speculation on the web site.
But no changes have ever been made to the website.
The church is in the process of putting together more meetings with the community, hopefully in the later weeks of April.
