Skip to content

Housing needs

The weekly editorial for the 100 Mile Free Press by Max Winkelman

Listening to CBC there was a story this week all about the limited availability of rental housing in Vancouver. It's no secret 100 Mile House has very little available rental housing as well.

According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) website, there are three programs in B.C. to increase the supply of affordable housing, however, the problems aren't just with the availability of affordable rental housing or those who are vulnerable. The South Cariboo needs more rental units across the board from subsidized rental units at the lower end, to units suited to those who don't require financial assistance but still need a place to live.

As noted in last week's paper, housing affordability in 100 Mile declined by seven per cent and William Lacy of the Northern Real Estate Board said he expects prices to continue to go up (see both stories on A3, March 9). Higher housing prices and decreased home ownership affordability, in the long term, will likely drive more people to look for rental opportunities.

None of this is unexpected and some of it isn't even news. As such, local politicians have been valiantly trying to resolve the issue, although evidently with little success. This is also hardly surprising. First of all, 100 Mile House is hardly the only northern or rural community struggling with the availability of rental units. For example, the hospital in Whitehorse has built their own staff accommodation. Similarly, the Clinton Council asked at a recent meeting (Feb. 22), "recruitment for medical staff for Clinton has been hindered and should IHA [Interior Health Authority] look at purchasing or providing a home such as the RCMP do."

Quite frankly, these types of stresses and financial costs shouldn't be placed on organizations such as IHA or the RCMP. Furthermore, this problem isn't unique to government funded organizations. Commercial businesses, non-profits and others also face difficulties when hiring employees from out of town who will have to relocate.

Especially as reports show large urban areas are the primary locations for economic growth, while rural locations, such as the Cariboo, struggle to make much progress, businesses shouldn't have the added hindrance of worrying about finding housing for employees, when looking to grow and hire new staff.

As this problem exists across numerous rural communities, it's not reasonable to expect city councils, individual MLAs or individual MPs to resolve this problem, when it's not specific to their community but rather common to rural communities across Canada. It would be great if, for five minutes, the federal or provincial governments could get their heads out of the sand that are Canada's vote-rich city centres and come up with a plan for housing availability in rural Canadian communities.