Neighbourhood pushback has councillors in Gibsons favouring a go-slow approach to a major affordable housing project.
The Town and the Sunshine Coast Housing Society have been looking for locations for a multi-unit rental development and had narrowed the search down to two pieces of Town-owned land: the Charman Creek Lands at the foot of Shaw Road and a lot on Shaw Road the Town now hopes to sell to Trellis Seniors Services for a long-term care facility.
At its Oct. 17 meeting, council’s committee of the whole was asked to endorse the Charman Creek site and start work on finalizing the plans and seeking funding from senior governments and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
The $9-million, 40-unit development would take up about 15 per cent of the lot, which is currently green space, and be a mix of subsidized units, below market rentals and market rentals.
Mayor Wayne Rowe said the feedback on the Charman Creek site from an open house over the summer was “not encouraging” and that some of the concerns are valid, given the pace of development in that part of the town. “It may just be too onerous for one neighbourhood to absorb the change.”
Rowe said his bottom line is that he could support going ahead with the next steps as long as the priority was on “early, often and effective” consultation with the neighbourhood. He cautioned that he did not consider the Charman Creek location a done deal.
Others on the committee agreed that more public consultation was needed, but Coun. Stafford Lumley also said the Town needs to act soon on housing.
“I think we have to be proactive on this,” Lumley said. “I guess the Town could just say, ‘We’re just so afraid of affordable housing that no one wants it,’ but when you wake up one day and a park near you has 75 people living in tents in it, you might say, ‘I wish we’d done something before this happened.’ That’s my biggest fear.”
Several residents of the area were also at the committee meeting.
William Baker told councillors they’ve now formed the O’Shea/Oceanmount Community Association to give the neighbourhood a stronger voice on developments like Eagleview Heights, Gospel Rock Village, Trellis and the Housing Society’s project.
“We’re an area that feels under siege,” Baker said. “We’ve got four major projects, plus the Gospel Rock traffic issue. This is a single-family, walkable, quiet community that now looks at all of these projects and goes, ‘What is happening?’”
Town staff said if the preliminary work is completed over the fall and winter it could be possible to draft new zoning bylaws in the spring of 2018.
Two other proposals were also up for consideration by the committee: Habitat for Humanity’s bid to take over the old RCMP building on School Road, and using a road dedication at Franklin Road and Harmony Lane for a two-unit rental project.
The federal government has declared the RCMP land surplus and both Habitat and the Town have submitted proposals.
The Squamish First Nation, which has priority when federal land becomes available in its traditional territory, has said it’s not interested.
Councillors considered supporting the Habitat application, but Coun. Silas White said he was worried that if the land was used for a traditional Habitat project it would evolve into market housing and pass out of public hands.
“I think we should continue our efforts to get Town autonomy and local control over this land to figure out what the best fit is for the Sunshine Coast and what the greatest need is,” White said.
In the end the committee voted to continue working with Habitat, but hold off on endorsing the group’s application to take over the lot.
The committee also voted to move ahead with converting the Franklin/Harmony Lane road dedication to a building lot to allow the Housing Society to move forward with its two-unit project.
The Society’s Matt Thomson said even though two units is a “drop in the bucket” when it comes to tackling the rental shortage, the project should be seen as a pilot and way for the Society to gain more expertise in managing developments as it gets ready to tackle bigger projects.
