Mayor Brain hopeful of progress on affordable housing situation in 2016

Mayor Brain provided a short
update on developments related
to Affordable Housing in the community

Admitting that things were moving a bit slowly on the nature of the city's affordable housing concerns, Mayor Lee Brain provided an update to Council on Monday as to where the process is currently at.

Noting that the summer months had provided a challenge owing to illness with one member of their stakeholder partnership on the issue, the Mayor offered up the prospect of some forward movement on the issues of affordable housing moving through the fall, with the hope of some solid proposals to share coming for the new year.

He provided a review of the two streams on housing that the City has taken over the year, the first the collection of data, to provide a good baseline when it comes to finding information related to potential lots available for development of affordable housing.

The second stream is one of engagement with a number of local stakeholders, including the Prince Rupert Aboriginal Services, Hecate Strait Business Society and North Coast Transition Society, all of which are working towards developing a housing strategy.

Towards that goal, they are currently working on a project with Prince Rupert Aboriginal Services making use of 50,000 dollars in funding from the province to explore housing options in the community.

With hopes of putting together some guidelines to provide more background on the scope of the project before reaching out to various levels of government, including the new Federal government to move their plans forward.

Councillor Thorkelson also added a few thoughts on the theme of challenges facing both residents in the community and those looking to provide for affordable housing, noting that there are a number of restrictions in place when it comes to developing that housing stock.

As well, she provided some examples of how the provincial commitments to the community have already been used up for this month and how there is little money left by way of subsidy to bridge local situations into December.

The full conversation on Housing can be reviewed from the City's Video Archive starting at the two minute mark.




More background on Monday's council session can be found from our November 9th page.

For more items related to the city's efforts on affordable housing issues see our archive page here.

Further background on developments from City Council can be found on our Council Discussion page.