Prince Rupert's Housing issues makes for short narrative for David Eby's NDP leadership launch

NDP leadership candidate David Eby noted of the challenges
for housing in Prince Rupert as part of his pitch to 
party members at his campaign launch on Tuesday
(Photo from David Eby FB)

Freshly announced as a candidate for the BC NDP leadership, David Eby tackled one of what will surely be a key issue in any future election head on and he used Prince Rupert as one of his talking points towards the challenges of housing.

Towards the end of his campaign launch on Tuesday evening, Eby noted of how families are struggling to find housing and the efforts that his office and the NDP government have taken to date on housing.

"We can't give up on our successful public responses to these challenges when it comes to housing, similarly we can no longer believe that we can solve homelessness if we're not building housing for the middle class in British Columbia.

The pressures on our housing market are pushing people out the bottom and into the street.

What drives  a lot  of people crazy is that they can afford housing, they have good jobs. 

And what drives businesses crazy is they want to hire people,  but the workers they want to hire can't find housing.

Just ask anyone who works at the Port in Prince Rupert, now probably folks tonight aren't going to do that, but I suspect if you turn to each other and have a very similar conversation here in Vancouver.

The Housing is just not there in the way that it should be. This problem is everywhere in rural and urban communities alike"

The Housing Minister then made his pitch for a blueprint of housing development that would see climate friendly homes built with Made in BC materials, developing skills across the province as some of the answer to the concerns.

"We can solve this problem and grow our economy by building climate friendly homes all over the province, using our timber, using apprenticeships, helping people develop skills. 

We can build opportunity across the province and address an issue at the same time"

His full comments on Housing can be reviewed from the Video of his campaign launch starting at the seventeen minute mark of his presentation.

The theme of housing has been a frequent one for the community, raised most recently in Mayor Lee Brain's State of the City address, which noted of the challenges that are found here and the dire need for more housing to be developed quickly.

Mr. Eby's comments from Tuesday should capture the attention of MLA Jennifer Rice and Prince Rupert City Council, who should quickly follow up on his themes and the opportunity perhaps to explore how he can make that campaign theme a demonstration project for the city.

A look at the housing challenges in Prince Rupert can be explored from our archive page here.

A wider overview of the Legislature is available here.