I’m responding to Michael Dailly’s article in the Star about affordable housing. I agree with him that lack of housing is part of the problem and that upgrading infrastructure and planning for upgrading the town will not necessarily affect the affordability issue.
One thing I do find a hole in the planning process is, I believe developers need to be held accountable for their huge profit margins and be made to provide a per cent, say 10 per cent of their units for rent or buy at an affordable price. If there are 100 new residential units in Railtown in the plans, are there plans for some of those units being affordable to low-income families? You know, the kind of families where both parents work and still only maybe makes the kind of money that one parent makes in a more prosperous family.
The council promised that Nelson Commons would do that. In reality, the Commons offered three units at a 10 per cent reduction of market cost. That in no way makes these units affordable!
A two-bedroom condo for $299,000 being offered at $269,000 is still unattainable for the working poor. Developers have the notorious reputation of gentrifying towns (Banff and Canmore as an example), making them unaffordable to the people who provide the services necessary for those places to exist. Ski instructors, city workers, educational assistants, servers (heck, city councillors!) and other blue collar workers deserve the option of buying a home. Maybe the council forgets the magnitude of the problem because they bought their homes 20-plus years ago.
Plus the Airbnb rules that council came up with did not properly tackle that issue. Far from it. A $200 business license a year for one room, and up to $800 for a guest house is laughable and could be made in less than a week for someone who is renting their space in that way. It does not discourage the practice, and only makes it more legitimate. With 110 licenses available, 110 rental spaces have been slashed from the market. I’m not proposing to end this practice completely but I believe half as many should be allowed. Business licenses for this activity should properly reflect the actual profit margin people can make with this activity.
So yes, plan, but actually plan for affordable housing.
June Hamley
Nelson