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Thomson talks about attainable housing for region

The Attainable Housing Committee (AHC) of the Lower Columbia Community Development Team (LCCDT) has hired housing consultant Matt Thomson to conduct an attainable housing needs assessment and prepare a housing strategy for the Lower Columbia Region. Three areas — Beaver Valley, the area from Warfield to Casino to Oasis, and Rossland to Patterson — will each receive localized attention.
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Matt Thomson

The Attainable Housing Committee (AHC) of the Lower Columbia Community Development Team (LCCDT) has hired housing consultant Matt Thomson to conduct an attainable housing needs assessment and prepare a housing strategy for the Lower Columbia Region. Three areas — Beaver Valley, the area from Warfield to Casino to Oasis, and Rossland to Patterson — will each receive localized attention.

“Attainable housing is a spectrum” Thomson said, referring to the wide range of a community’s housing needs. “It’s a diverse region,” he added, suggesting a similar variety in approaches different communities can take to meet their housing needs.

The first phase of the project, a “needs assessment” to be completed in July, will consider the current state of housing in the Lower Columbia along the whole spectrum from emergency and social housing to market housing.

The second phase, a strategic plan set for the end of October, will look to 2021 and recommend “planning principles, policy options, and priorities” that are likely to be supported and, in a staged action plan over the next decade, give an “appropriate mix of attainable housing,” said Patricia Marshall Thompson, the chair of the Housing and Affordability Task Force of Rossland’s Sustainability Commission (SC) and a partner to the LCCDT in this project.

One of Thomson’s key objectives is to fully and actively engage the community during the assessment and continue to involve them as strategies develop.

“It’s been a long process to get someone hired and working on it.” Marshall Thompson said about the three years since  the SC, the LCCDT, and others recognized a strong need for a regional housing study. “He seems like a really great guy, keen and capable, and we’re happy to have him.”

Thomson’s first step will be to gather data, partly from government sources such as StatsCan, BC Stats, BC Housing, and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), but also from many local sources. Importantly, he will interview municipal planners, local service providers, developers, real estate agents and many others who will each provide insights into the overall housing needs of the region.

“Service providers come into it because of the vulnerable and homeless population or those at risk of homelessness,” Thomson said. Food Banks, the Salvation Army, community service organization, victim services, and others can indicate the extent of “risk and vulnerability within the region,” he explained.

He’ll talk to local developers “to get a sense of where they think the market’s going, where it’s been, and why it’s been the way it is.”

He will also need to hear from people working in the local economy, such as the credit unions and employers “to get their assessment of workforce statistics and trends,” he said.

When it comes to developing a strategy for the region, the AHC and Thomson already have commitments from the local municipalities and areas A and B that they will provide any information required, “including identification of land owned by local governments which could be used for attainable housing,” the AHC said

When the needs assessment has been prepared, Thomson will begin to assemble “a long list of strategies” for each sector to address the housing issue in ways that are likely to be adopted, he said. A large number of approaches will be “workshopped” with the communities in late September, “and out of that will come a strategic plan for attainable housing,” he said.

Thomson has lived and traveled worldwide but has settled with his partner and their newborn son in Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast.

The AHC is composed of representatives from municipal governments, RDKB planning staff, and non-profit organization representatives with an interest in housing issues, and is funded by the Columbia Basin Trust, the CMHC, the Kootenay Savings Credit Union Foundation, as well as several of the local area governments.

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Matt Thomson, the Attainable Housing Committee consultant, is keen to take on a rapid learning curve about this region as he seeks input from a wide range of local sources in targeted interviews, focus groups, and public workshops. He understands the problems are complex, but he also hopes to find patterns that will help communities customize long term housing strategies.

“It’s a provincial phenomenon,” Thomson said. “Housing is getting increasingly inaccessible even for working families and retirees, not to mention people who are more vulnerable.”

“We see it especially around the more metropolitan cores, like Kelowna, Kamloops, Vancouver, Victoria,” he continued, but similar problems, perhaps with different causes, are also experienced in rural areas.

He gave Rossland as an example. “As a recreational draw,” he said, “it runs the risk of attracting people who would purchase a home and then only spend part of the year in it. That can significantly drive the market up.”

“A town like Trail — dependent on a few main employers, but with a large turnover in workforce — may be hard-pressed as the region attracts more young families who are coming to get work either at the new dam project that’s being developed, or as Teck starts to flip it’s workforce over,” he said. “That may drive prices up.” He suggested there is a risk that house prices will be increasingly unattainable for the young families Teck wants to attract.

When pressed for a sample of strategies that local governments — municipalities and the regional district — can put in place, Thomson said “it’s a matter of what works in a community.”

“Secondary suites are one that some communities here have already taken on,” he suggested, but also gave the example of carriage homes, a small cottage on a property.

“If the municipality allows it to be plumbed,” he explained, “then it could provide a mortgage helper for young families, but also an affordable source of rental housing.”

Governments can “offer a lot of support for emergency and supportive or transitional housing for people who are really vulnerable,” but should also take a “closer look” at community cores, looking for opportunities to increase “available rental and diverse market housing.”

It’s not just density, although the mindset of efficiency is important; Thomson emphasized “diverse housing.” Without housing diversity, he said, communities often end up sprawling, or else market prices are driven beyond the reach of many.

One of the biggest challenges faced in rural communities, he said, is considering alternatives that cause some to “fear the character of their town will be lost.”

“Incremental changes,” he said, “can help maintain the character of the community by ensuring that young people are still around, that there’s still a workforce available, and that seniors can age in place.”