Feb 2025 Dialogue with Jack Sandor of Homes for Living provides a fascinating window onto Homes for Living and described lobbying activities to MLAs. No Entry for the organization appears when searched on on the BC Lobbyists Registry.
Homes For Living was registered with Elections BC as a Third Party Sponsor during the general local government election of 2022, which saw majorities of Homes For Living endorsed candidates become elected on the Councils of the City of Victoria, District of Saanich, and the District of Oak Bay.
By Sasha Izard
July 17, 2025
On July 14, 2025 a commentary was published in the Times Colonist by Jack Sandor described as vice-president of the non-profit Homes For Living.
The title of the commentary in the TC was: “Comment: Raucous Saanich council meeting not true gauge of opinion”
Public meetings not true gauge of opinion – Victoria Times Colonist
It was subtitled:
“If I were to list all the things I’d rather do than endure the ordeal of public meetings I’d run out of paper”.
The commentary was in reference to a July 9 Times Colonist Article titled: Quadra-McKenzie plan moves forward after raucous meeting – Victoria Times Colonist
The meeting began with speakers from Homes For Living and other similar pressure groups that advance an agenda of housing density/increased transit, passionately speaking one after another. At points this led to tensions that evening, the coverage of which arguably blown out of proportion, served as a distraction from a plan that Colin Plant referred to that night as a “trainwreck” and then apologized for it soon after:
Saanich Councillor Colin Plant apologizes for using the word “trainwreck” in regard to the July 2025 Revised Quadra McKenzie Draft Plan. – CRD Watch Homepage
This is not unusual for speakers of Homes For Living and other similar pressure groups to be the first to speak at council meetings one after another in a group. It has happened at various council meetings/Public Hearings across the Greater Victoria region. Saanich the previous fall had waived the stated address requirement for speakers, thus allowing groups of non-residents to push an agenda to council without identifying whether or not they are actually residents of the District, something I predicted in a letter to the editor at the time would set a bad and highly predictable precedent for the future, as lobbyists could now go undetected as non-residents and without that former transparency, potentially skew processes in the favour of their agenda.
Although I didn’t mention Jack Sandor by name in the letter, I was referring to his being the only person on record to have supported the elimination of Open Forum at Saanich, incidentally quite some time after Saanich Council had voted to eliminate it despite the numerous requests by the public on the record not to do so that fell on deaf ears from the Mayor and majority of council.
I referred explicitly to Homes For Living in that letter.
LETTER: Saanich should rethink elimination of open forum – Saanich News
During the 2022 general local government election Homes For Living endorsed for the election, the majority of candidates that became elected that year for 3 councils in the Greater Victoria Region. The councils included for the municipalities of Saanich, Victoria and Oak Bay.
HFL could well consider themselves ‘kingmakers’ of sorts. Public input opportunities were reduced drastically by the majority councils they had endorsed in the City of Victoria and in the District of Saanich.
In addition, Bill 44 passed by the Province in 2023, eliminated the majority of public hearings across the Province, as upzoning allowing so-called missing middle (but unaffordable by CMHC definition) housing in much higher density than before without adequate environmental protections was forced across the Province.
See: Freedom of Information reveals that the Province of B.C. was working to implement what the registered lobbying organization, the Urban Development Institute, had been pushing for. This culminated in the recent Housing Bills that override local government authority on zoning. – CRD Watch Homepage
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In hindsight, I thought back to a dialogue I had with Jack Sandor on the CRD Watch Facebook page in February of 2025.
Throughout the conversation, and also speaking with him in-person once outside a council meeting, I was impressed by Jack Sandor’s affability and candor, unusual for Homes For Living, whose members can be pretty cagey about the organization’s activities. On the contrary, I found Sandor’s responsiveness to be refreshing.
In the dialogue recorded in screenshots from the CRD Watch Facebook page, he discussed Homes For Living’s lobbying efforts including approaching MLAs to convince them to adopt various policies.
Although he claimed in the conversation that Homes For Living as he put it “registered as lobbyist in 2022”, no indication of that appears on the BC Lobbyists Registry that I have been able to find. This appears to stem from a confusion that Sandor may have had, as Homes For Living did register with Elections BC as a Third Party Sponsor in 2022.
Neither for that matter, have my searches on the BC Lobbyists Registry yielded the names of Homes For Living members in the entries on it.
The following is a recording of that dialogue with Mr. Sandor in early February.
On February 3, 2025 I reposted on the CRD Watch Facebook page the following send out from the Homes For Living newsletter:
This was followed by 49 comments on the Facebook thread, a popular one.
The following are screenshots from those comments:
Then Jack Sandor (Homes for Living) chimed in:
Note: Sandor didn’t answer that question, but the dialogue moved on.
Note: When I search “Homes for Living” on the BC Lobbyists Registry, there are many entries unrelated to the organization, and none related to the organization that appear. Homes For Living does not appear to have registered on the BC Lobbyists Registry. I suspect that Mr. Sandor was confusing “We registered as lobbyist in 2022” with registering as a Third Party Sponsor during the last election, which is documented in contrast.
The following is a screen capture of my search for “Homes for Living”, which did not yield an entry for an organization of that name on the BC Lobbyists Registry.
The Facebook dialogue continued where it left off:
Note: The UDI (Urban Development Institute), unlike Homes For Living, is registered on the BC Lobbyists Registry: Urban Development Institute / Anne McMullin, President & CEO – 12-Month Lobbying Summary – Lobbyists Registry – Office of the Registrar or Lobbying of BC
Although it should be noted that the previous UDI Capital Region Executive Director (no longer listed as staff as of earlier this year) denied to the District of View Royal on the record that the UDI is a lobbying group (she was registered at the time on the BC Lobbyists Registry as In-House Lobbyist for the UDI).
With this episode mentioned by the Mayor at a subsequent council meeting 2 months later and quoting from the Lobbyists Registry entry for the UDI, View Royal council unanimously voted to discontinue the District’s membership with the UDI and ratified that decision on November 21, 2023. The UDI Capital Region pulled down its website the same day and it has never been launched again, although there is now a central website for the UDI in British Columbia (headquartered in Vancouver) UDI.org that does have some bare bones information about the UDI Capital Region still on it.
The UDI’s Members Directory which includes numerous paying branches of government, in addition to its hundreds of paying corporate members involved in real estate and development, also disappeared at that time and has never been made public again by the UDI.
See: LETTER: Local governments should distance themselves from lobbyists – Saanich News
Also: Index of material hidden from the public by the development lobby. – CRD Watch Homepage
The Facebook discussion continued where it was left off:
Note: The Chair of the UDI Capital Region, in early 2023, was screenshotted at various times appearing on Homes For Living’s online Discord channel looking for support for the rezoning proposals of the company he worked for. An address for his company’s office on Cook Street was provided on the BC Lobbyists Registry at the time.
After various issues arose about the District of Saanich also being a paying member of the UDI at the time that this company was seeking favourable zoning for its projects, the District of Saanich withdrew its membership with the organization.
Saanich bails on membership in developers’ organization – Victoria Times Colonist
Note: at the time of writing Sam Holland is simultaneously a Homes For Living Director and Chair of Better Transit YYJ (whose website is the same as that of the Better Transit Alliance )
Archived snapshot of the website from June 14, 2025: Better Transit Alliance – Advocating for better public transit in Greater Victoria
Quadra-McKenzie plan moves forward after raucous meeting – Victoria Times Colonist “Sam Holland, chair of Better Transit YYJ,”
Saanich wants B.C. to look beyond U.S. in quest for affordable elevators – Oak Bay News “Sam Holland, a director of Homes for Living, a local housing advocacy group, echoed Bonaroff’s statement. “
Holland was an early proponent of the Quadra McKenzie Plan’s transportation system, a subject of considerable controversy.
McKenzie could finally get bus lanes—if transit riders stand up – Better Columbia Nov 3, 2024 by Sam Holland
Sandor’s double-edged sarcasm aside, his confusion about Homes For Living’s registration status in regard to lobbying, is contrasted with his informative comments about Homes For Living lobbying activities; including mentioning meeting with MLAs to convince them of policy, something that had long been suspected, but previously appears to have gone under the radar.
The name Homes For Living has been notably contrasted to the Province’s Homes for People plan, something not lost it seems on its own members.
The following are Screenshots from Homes For Living’s online Discord Channel, including their discussion of the Province’s release of its Homes for People Plan:
Luke Mari (Discord handle AryzeDev) is on Left with Homes For Living member Bridget at podium. Premier Eby and Victoria’s Mayor Alto both NDP can be seen at the back of the photo.
Homes for Living member David Berry commented: “Homes for Living – Homes For People COINCIDENCE??”
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Update: Jack Sandor responded to the article on the CRD Watch Facebook page on July 17, 2025:
I replied to him:
See:
Oak Bay Candidate Rankings (Accessed July 12, 2025)
Oak Bay Candidate Rankings (Archived version from April 20, 2024)
Saanich Candidate Rankings (Accessed: July 12, 2025)
Saanich Candidate Rankings (Archived version from Jan, 2025)
Victoria Candidate Rankings (Accessed: July 12, 2025)
Victoria Candidate Rankings Archived version from Jan, 2025
Sandor replied:
Note: My further research shows that Homes For Living was not actually registered as an Electoral organization, but rather as a Third Party Sponsor during the last election.
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See also:
Jack Knox: Endorsements can offer path to follow, or avoid – Victoria Times Colonist Oct 11, 2022
“Notes from the last week of the election campaign.
• Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps has released a list of the city council candidates she’s supporting in the Oct. 15 vote.
It’s a rare move for a sitting mayor, but one that Helps, who isn’t running for re-election, felt free to make.
It was no accident that her list mirrored that of the Homes For Living group: Marianne Alto for mayor, and Dave Thompson, Jeremy Caradonna, Matt Dell, Tony Yacowar, Susan Kim, Khadoni Pitt Chambers, Anna King and Krista Loughton for council. “I thought about all the ways I could approach this question, and kept coming back to housing,” Helps blogged.”
Helps became the Housing Solutions Advisor to the Premier after she left office.
Although I didn’t mention Sandor by name, he was the person referred to in the following letter to the editor that addressed Saanich Council in favour of eliminating open forum, after they had already voted to eliminate it:
LETTER: Saanich should rethink elimination of open forum – Saanich News
“After I had pointed this out at open forum that evening; during public input at the 27:33 time point, a member of the registered third-party electoral organization Homes For Living, called in and spoke in favour of eliminating open forum. This was the first and only member of the public on record to have spoken in favour of eliminating open forum, and well after council had already voted to eliminate it.”
“On Oct. 28, the majority of council voted to remove the statement of address requirement during public input, thus allowing non-residents (including lobbyists) to go undetected during input.”
Index of Articles and other Media Coverage about Homes For Living – CRD Watch Homepage
CRD Watch Homepage 
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