The Sunshine Coast Housing Committee is up and running and looking to make a difference by creating affordable housing for up to a dozen people on the Coast.
"Our priority population groups that we want to serve are young individuals, young families and then sort of middle to senior individuals who are independent, but not able to find something either in the ownership market or the rental market that's suitable for them," said committee coordinator Matt Thomson.
"So it would be kind of a mixed age community. We haven't settled on the tenure option, whether it would be rental or ownership and that would depend very much on the partners that we had involved in it."
The committee was started in February thanks to $40,000 of funding from the Town of Gibsons, District of Sechelt and the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD).
The committee's made up of members from the Town of Gibsons, Sechelt and the SCRD and of members from the development, real estate, financial and non-profit housing sectors. The committee's goal is to provide leadership and coordination for affordable housing on the Coast.
During meetings in February and April, the committee reviewed existing research and policies on affordable housing and set priorities for where to focus in the coming year.
The research showed an obvious lack of subsidized and affordable rental and ownership options on the Coast. With that in mind, the committee set a number of action items for 2013.
They include developing a land inventory of areas suitable for affordable housing, reviewing and addressing policy barriers to affordable housing and initiating a pilot project in partnership with stakeholders that develops affordable rental and/or ownership units on the Coast.
The committee is now seeking out interested partners to make the pilot project a reality.
"We're not necessarily going to have shovels in the ground by the end of the year, but we're looking at doing some preliminary applications for funding because you can get seed funding from BC Housing and CMHC [Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation], so that would allow the step forward," Thompson said.
The committee also intends to support other groups in their efforts to address housing issues on the Coast.
If you would like to connect with the committee or learn more, contact Thomson at [email protected].
