They have the land, but they don’t have a plan.
As part of their development guidelines for the JL Jackson property, School District #83 has made a one-acre parcel of land on the site available to the City of Salmon Arm for the development of affordable housing. Salmon Arm council, however, isn’t certain what role it should be playing in the provision of affordable housing.
The dilemma arose when city development and planning director Corey Paiement asked council for direction.
“In speaking to a number of, I’ll say stakeholders, or people who have participated in a number of affordable housing projects, free land does not make a project viable,” said Paiement, adding there are a number of things the municipality could do to make an affordable housing project attractive to developers such as waiving development cost charges (DCCs), offside servicing requirements and development application fees.
Paiement said that in order to proceed with a request for proposals, council needs to clarify what, if any, kind of financial assistance the city is willing to offer.
Because they work with the school district, Couns. Alan Harrison and Ken Jamieson declared a conflict of interest and stepped out of this discussion. Coun. Kevin Flynn, however, said the councillors should be involved in a higher-level discussion on the challenges facing the city in providing affordable housing.
“As I recall, the one acre that the school district was forced to give up, not by staff but by community input… because of community input, nobody took into account how viable it might be, whether it was realistic, whether it could occur and whether we were willing to waive DCCs, provide rent subsidies and all those things,” said Fllynn. “It was one of those, feel-good, give us an acre of land and I’m sure somebody will develop it,” he says. “But as the director of development services has made very clear, that’s not how easy it is to do affordable housing.”
Flynn said he would be willing to talk about waiving costs like DCCs, but Paiement said the city would still have to pay these costs.
Coun. Chad Eliason noted that if the city doesn’t have a lease for the lot signed by Dec. 31, the school district could use the land for other purposes.
Coun. Ivan Idzan suggested the city seek an extension on the deadline, recognizing Salmon Arm needs affordable housing.
“One reason I’d like to move it forward is, as it was recently cited in that MoneySense magazine study of Canada’s best places to live with populations over 10,000, out of 180 communities in our country, we actually ranked 164 when it came to affordable housing, which says we definitely have an issue,” said Idzan. Eliason agreed with Flynn and Idzan, stating that federal and provincial funding for projects like co-op housing and Rotary Gardens aren’t available anymore.
“It comes down to us adopting an affordable housing strategy, talking to the social issues committee, talking to Canadian Mental Health, talking to all of the different service groups and reinstituting that process,” said Eliason. “It is bigger than this piece of property. We have the land, we just don’t have the strategy and we don’t have the policy and we don’t have those key pieces in place.”
Flynn hoped the school district might be sympathetic and allow the city an extension and time to figure out the long-term implications of becoming involved in such a project. 17:08:36