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| Mayor Brain and Councillor Thorkelson carried the bulk of the housing discussion on Tuesday evening |
Providing some background on a meeting last week which brought a number of local service providers together, as the group met to discuss housing issues and lay the groundwork for a comprehensive look at housing needs in the community.
The Mayor highlighted the City's partnership with the Prince Rupert Aboriginal Services Society on the issue and outlined some of the topics that last weeks discussion worked on.
From that session the City and its partners will now launch a city wide campaign to survey the needs of housing in the community, looking to find what the actual numbers are on the ground and what services they require in order to have a better picture of what they are dealing with.
From that review, the Mayor outlined that the process would then see the data that is collected put into the Go Plan, with that information then provided to the provincial government to show the housing needs in the community.
Mayor Brain also outlined that the Prince Rupert Aboriginal Services Society can access funding through a government project in order to put in place a pilot project in the community that will be related to housing, something that he advised the City's housing committee is assisting with.
The first stage though will be the need to conduct the survey of community need and for that topic, the city will be issuing a call for volunteers in the near future. Looking for community assistance to get the entire process underway.
As though to highlight some of the concern in the community when it comes to housing, previous to the Mayor's review, Councillor Thorkelson had provided Council with an update on one current situation in the city.
Where according to Ms. Thorkelson, up to 20 current residents of the Neptune Inn will be required to look for new accommodations by the end of the month.
As she observed on Tuesday evening, the residents in question at the Neptune, who for the most part were relocated to that building in the aftermath of the Elizabeth Apartments fire of a few years ago, have been served with a notice to vacate by the 30th of April.
A situation that she noted brings the need to provide a bit of urgency towards their housing discussions for council members.
You can review the full housing discussion from the City's Video Archive, it starts off at the 51 minute mark.
More background on housing issues in the community can be found here.
For more items related to City Council discussions see our archive page here.
