“I can’t walk into a meeting without housing come up, even if the meeting has nothing to do with housing. I think that says a lot.”
That’s what Nicole Fricot, the City of Revelstoke’s director of economic development, told me when I spoke to her about affordable housing last week.
Her comment was telling. Housing, or more specifically the lack of, is without a doubt the biggest issue in Revelstoke. The last time I wrote about it was more than a year ago, with one article that looked at the booming real estate market and a second headlined The future of housing in Revelstoke. The latter talked about different housing types such as co-housing, micro-suites and tiny homes.
Since then, the real estate market has continued to boom, rents continue to rise, and people struggle to find homes. When it comes to affordable housing, the market hasn’t changed. Over the past year, there hasn’t been any progress, whether through the public or private sector, and there’s a housing shortage in Revelstoke that’s forcing people to move and preventing people from hiring workers.
“I’m disappointed we haven’t made more progress on affordable housing,” said Mayor Mark McKee. “I can’t pinpoint my one finger on one thing probably because it needs the support of everybody. There is no one reason we haven’t made more progress.”
Glenn O’Reilly is the chair of the Revelstoke Community Housing Society. The society was controlled by the city, but last year it was turned into it an independent agency and has been seeking members to help guide it forward. They had their first meeting in January and then held a strategic planning session.
At the time, O’Reilly said he hoped to have a plan together for Revelstoke’s next affordable housing development by the fall. That has proven to be wishful thinking.
“Affordable housing is a slow moving process,” he told me last week. “We’re still looking for directors, we’re still looking for members. Everybody’s talking, but nobody’s stepped up to the plate.”
O’Reilly was clearly frustrated with the lack of progress. His biggest issue is a land-use plan for the city’s Oscar Street property that council approved last year. The housing society felt that was their land to develop, but the new plan, which divided the property into sections, called that into question.
“We’re deciding who we are as a board, what our mandate is and what our purpose is. We’re now talking about what it is we want to do,” he said. “We have ideas of what we want to do, but to get the funding, we have no land.”
O’Reilly said this means they can’t apply for funding to develop a plan for the next set of affordable housing units.
“No matter what we build, it’s going to get filled,” he added.
There appears to be confusion with regards to the Oscar Street lands; I asked Nigel Whitehead, the city’s director of development services, about them and he said a portion was still set aside for affordable housing.
Kevin Dorrius, the manager of Community Futures, sought to tackle the housing issue but also emerged frustrated. Last November he hosted a meeting with local businesses to talk about developing staff housing. He followed it up with a survey and said he received 50 responses — far less than expected. Significantly, he was disappointed in the lack of response from the hotel sector, which is arguably facing the biggest crunch due to the housing shortage.
Dorrius said there wasn’t enough data to produce a report. “Everybody’s talking about this being the biggest issue that we face in Revelstoke, but every call to action, we’re not getting a response,” he said. “The whole point of that survey was to build us the case to go forward to funding agencies. Despite our best efforts to get it out there, we got nowhere near the response we figured we would get.”
Community Futures is supporting the housing society with staff time, but Dorrius said he’s disappointed businesses aren’t more involved. “To be blunt, a lot of people have been complaining about the problem, but they need to step up and be part of the solution,” he said. “It is causing major problems for families, for individuals, for businesses, and we need to get more people in the community actually dedicated to do something about this. And not just saying somebody needs to fix this.”
On Friday morning, I talked to Peter Nielsen, the vice-president of operations of Revelstoke Mountain Resort. He said about half their staff are year-round employees, but they still have to ramp up for the busy summer and winter seasons.
I asked him directly if they would be building staff housing. “It’s definitely on the front burner for consideration. We’re looking at different options,” he replied.
He said they leased a block of apartments for their summer staff but is concerned about housing staff this winter. He agreed when I said what’s really needed is new, dedicated staff housing.
“Long-term we can’t expect to solve the problem without adding inventory,” he said. “Shorter-term, if we can get a grasp on the short-term rental problem and start seeing some of the existing housing return to long-term rental inventory, that would provide a lot of relief. There’s definitely a need for long-term added inventory.”
Earlier this year, Nicole Fricot submitted an application for funding to create a tourism plan that would include housing as one of its elements. While she’s still waiting for a response, she and Whitehead have been discussing the issue regularly.
“We’ve sat down and talked about three or four different ways of going about this,” she said. “We’ve talked with different contractors, different people, different business that will help.”
She said government and the private sector need to be part of the solution. “I don’t think the city has all of the answers,” Fricot said. “I have a lot of faith in the private sector to come up with interesting ideas and new ways of doing things and I think this is a problem we all have to work on.”
Whitehead, for his part, has been looking at the issue off the side of his desk. His priority has been getting through the development backlog in his department, but he said he has started to dig into the issue.
“I’ve taken a look at the Oscar Street lands and how that came about and what’s remaining there for potential,” he said. “And just generally getting a sense that affordable housing is something this community needs across the whole spectrum of affordability, right from subsidized below market to lower-end market rental and ownership.”
In the short-term, he said the goal would be to work on the next phase of the Oscar Street development, and he is also looking at the issue of vacation rentals. In the long term, he said the Official Community Plan should adopt policies friendly to affordable housing.
“There’s a bit in there right now talking about minimum unit sizes, parking reductions for affordable housing,” Whitehead said. “There’s also DCC reductions available for affordable housing, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of market appetite for building specific rental or any kind of affordable housing.
“I’m not sure why that is. I haven’t really dug into that yet, but it seems to be common across B.C., that the market is not building affordable housing, it’s government that’s building affordable housing, or at least funding the capital for it.”
McKee said he would help support any affordable housing project that came forward.
“I’m always interested in any affordable housing project and wherever there’s need for city support, then I will be pushing for that support and any other support from other funders, whether it’s the province, Columbia Basin Trust, whoever,” he said. “I’m always open to listening, talking and looking at anything that helps the housing in the community.”