Burns Lake might be able to provide land for housing. They are certainly going to look at the possibilities, over the next few months.
Our town is, like most if not all B.C. communities, going to scour their real estate holdings to see if there’s somewhere available for adding homes.
The call was made by the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM), as local governments work with the provincial government to address the critical shortage of housing across the province. Out-of-reach home prices are at crisis levels in locations like the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, and other regions have alarming housing conditions as well, but very few places anywhere in the province are completely unscathed.
“The Ministry of Housing is seeking your assistance with respect to documenting potential municipal land for housing as the province rolls out and implements its refreshed housing strategy in the coming months and years,” said Jen Ford, president of the UBCM (also a town councillor for Whistler and chair of the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District).
“The provincial government is currently undertaking an inventory of provincial lands that could potentially be used for the creation of affordable housing of all sorts: co-ops, non-profits, affordable home ownership and other opportunities to get more people into housing they can afford. At the same time, the Ministry of Housing would like to invite willing local governments to provide a list of municipally owned land that could potentially be used for housing.”
The idea is not to repeal parks and turn them into condo spaces. It is an exercise in taking stock of opportunities where a parcel opf land already in the public’s inventory could possibly be maximized for the critical housing needs almost every community faces.
The problem isn’t just spotting a house for sale or rent that suits your needs, the much deeper issue is housing being so short that prices are driven up, and a significant population no longer being able to buy, so they rent, and a next tier of citizens who similarly are no longer able to rent so they are faced with homelessness or living in insecure ways. This cascading effect spins off into costly conditions for the taxpayer and begins chains of poverty that need not happen, if only there were more physical spaces in which to safely live.
“The purpose at this point is to get a sense of public land available for housing and understand which municipalities might be interested down the road in partnerships to create more housing in their communities,” said Ford. “This can include bare land. And they (the Ministry of Housing) are also encouraging local governments to think ahead for the next five to 10 years: in addition to potential bare land, is there a community centre, library, firehall or other municipal infrastructure that you plan to build or rebuild where, through partnership, housing could be part of the development or redevelopment?”
The request was made by letter and at the most recent public meeting of Burns Lake’s council, the decision was approved to task municipal staff with undertaking this study. The results will be provided to the UBCM database by the end of July.