City hosts forum to help find fix for rental crunch
BC Housing says government, developers, bureaucrats need to support housing projects
Tens of billions of dollars are on the table as the provincial and federal governments roll out new affordable housing strategies, but projects won’t go forward without vocal support from the community, delegates heard Wednesday at a special forum in Penticton.
Organized by the City of Penticton, the meeting gathered developers, politicians and staff from local governments, and representatives of the non-profit sector in a bid to help them come up with ways to address the housing crunch here.
BC Housing regional director Danna Locke told those in the room they will need to support each other’s projects through the approvals process to help explain the need for them to the community at large.
“I’ve been at BC Housing for a long time — since the ’90s — and have had family townhouse projects rejected because of NIMBY (not in my backyard). Think today if those townhouses existed. Those families would have been housed and maybe some of those kids wouldn’t be homeless today,” she said.
“The local municipality really needs the backup and support for them to go through and take hits from neighbours who are unaware.”
Mayor Andrew Jakubeit — whose city had a miniscule 0.9 per cent rental vacancy rate as of October 2017 — agreed community buy-in is essential to solving the problem of a lack of affordable housing.
“If you think it’s important to your community, you should voice it when asked or support it when it comes out — or put forward some ideas to deal with it,” he said.
Jakubeit is optimistic the roughly 100 people who turned out for the forum at the Penticton Lakeside Resort can help get the job done.
“For solutions to be successful, we have to have collaboration from different levels of governments, non-profits and the development community,” he said. “We’ve never actually had all these parties under one roof, and I think that’s exciting.”
The B.C. NDP’s 2018 budget sets out a 10-year, $6.6-billion plan to build 114,000 new units of affordable housing.
BC Housing, the agency responsible for putting the plan into action, spent $17.4 million in Penticton alone last year to subsidize 1,536 units and shelter beds and provide rental assistance to 604 people.
Meanwhile, the federal Liberal government last year rolled out a 10-year, $40-billion plan to build 100,000 new units of affordable housing and repair another 300,000.