Capital Region District Victoria Housing Market

The elderly are starting to abandon the Capital Region - either dying faster than expected or unable to afford to live here.
Whatever the case, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation can't explain why its annual B.C. Seniors' Housing Market Survey projects a lot less elderly people living here five years from now - 613 fewer people age 75 and over.
"It's surprising," admits local CMHC Vancouver Island market analyst Peggy Prill who didn't know why the number of elderly will decline here, but increase everywhere else.
She didn't dispute that the high cost of affordable housing - ownership or rental - might be a factor.
It's something Victoria Community Housing spokesman David Scott said "is just too expensive" for many to afford.
The average price for single family homes in the region last month was $482,000, with the average for condominiums being just over $255,500, according to Victoria Real Estate Board figures.
Prill said the projected drop in senior numbers may also be the result of "mortality rates for people here now," she said. "It's science but there is some judgement involved" in the way the survey was compiled.
David O'Neil, BC Stats population section manager, called it a demographic "blip" that will continue through 2012 after which the number of those 75 and older will spiral, hitting a projected 57,000 by 2031.
Hidden on a number chart in the 20-page survey report were the following figures: Metro Victoria's 2005 population of 329,685 included 32,153 people age 75-plus.
Five years later, the population is projected to be 338,723 with only 31,540 seniors over 75.
Elsewhere across Vancouver Island and B.C. - except New Westminster which will suffer a decline of 180 elderly - the number of old people will continue to spiral.
The two exceptions fly in the face of population projects by BC Stats, which says "both the share an overall population of retirement age (65+) will continue to increase significantly - from 13.2 per cent in 2001 to 22.6 per cent in 2031."
In fact, Vancouver Island will have even more elderly than average. A BC Stats chart says the senior population on the Island should hit over 26 per cent by then.
The "very senior" population (80+) will also increase very significantly" across the province, it says, growing from 3.3 per cent of the population in 2001 to 6.1 per cent in 2031.
O'Neil said population projections are "what if" possibilities that apply only when all factors used to calculate such figures fall exactly into place, he said, including in-migration, mortality rates among specific age groups, and the number of people in each age group that are expected to make it to age 75 and older.
As he told Prill in an email: "You should remember that even though these are 'only projections' prone to error . . . even if we had no migration (or more) we would still see pretty much the same patterns."