If all goes according to plan, the Village of Pemberton (VOP) could soon see millions of federal dollars flowing in to help ease the community’s ongoing housing crisis.
At a Committee of the Whole meeting on Tuesday afternoon, July 18, Pemberton’s mayor and council endorsed a grant application for Canada’s Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) ahead of next month’s deadline—but not before hammering out a couple of amendments to the contents of the application VOP staff proposed.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) HAF is a grant program aiming to help municipalities like the VOP increase housing supply over a three-year period. The federal government launched the $4-billion HAF earlier this year to support “the development of complete, low-carbon and climate-resilient communities that are affordable, inclusive, equitable and diverse,” according to CMHC’s website.
The CMHC requires each local government to include an action plan in its HAF application, outlining specific steps the municipality intends to take to meet its housing demands.
To be eligible for funding, applications from small, rural, northern, Indigenous communities like Pemberton must contain a recent housing needs assessment, a commitment to submit periodic reports to CMHC, a housing supply growth target, and at least five initiatives the municipality will undertake to help meet those targets.
Pemberton’s mayor and council got their first look at that proposed action plan at Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole meeting, when VOP sought support for the plan ahead of the HAF’s fast-approaching application deadline on Aug. 18.
The total number of dwelling units in Pemberton currently sits at 1,390. The VOP predicts 308 new housing units will be added to its supply within the next three years, without any outside help from the HAF. With a HAF grant, however, the VOP projects that number would rise to 508 new permitted housing units available within three years. VOP staff estimate a successful HAF application could earn the Village about $6.67 million in grant revenue.
The HAF isn’t intended to fund specific housing projects. Rather, the incentive funding could help municipalities like Pemberton pay for everything from construction of affordable housing to drinking water infrastructure, public transit, and disaster mitigation.
The robust, 23-page action plan brought to VOP council on July 18 partly builds off the Age-Friendly Affordable Action Plan the Village completed in 2019, as well as the Housing Needs Assessment Pemberton’s elected officials received last month.
Though HAF applicants can include as many initiatives as they like in their action plans, CMHC has made it clear it will evaluate funding eligibility through a scoring system that only takes into account the first five initiatives listed.
The top-five initiatives laid out in the VOP’s proposed plan are: creating a new housing strategy; investigating opportunities for infill housing; updating development approval processes (including waiving public hearings on all affordable housing projects that conform to Pemberton’s Official Community Plan); allowing increased housing density by eliminating rezoning requirements for multi-storey housing located within walking distance of transit stops; and finally, incentivizing and encouraging the development of new purpose-built rental units.
Those five initiatives are “not necessarily representative of a list of priorities for housing in Pemberton—this is what staff [believe] is the best way to position ourselves to be successful for this program,” VOP planner Colin Brown told committee members at Tuesday’s meeting.
Other proposed initiatives on the action plan’s list include updating infrastructure; promoting “innovative housing types;” implementing new processes and systems; enabling mixed-use development or redevelopment of Village-owned properties; and studying the feasibility of a potential housing authority in Pemberton.
The Village’s elected officials appeared supportive of some initiatives outlined in the proposed plan, but skeptical of others.
Councillor Katrina Nightingale took particular issue with the elimination of some public hearings suggested in the third initiative. “I think transparency and accountability right now is paramount to good government, and I personally am uncomfortable with that,” she said following staff’s presentation.
Coun. Jennie Helmer echoed those concerns, and also acknowledged a need to carefully structure any increases to Pemberton’s housing supply in light of the sky-high population growth Spud Valley has seen in recent years.
“I think we did an excellent housing needs report that points to the needs of the community, but we’re not able to appropriately match that through development because we can’t control who buys the units that we build—so we’re building a lot of market housing and incentivizing people to move here, but we still haven’t solved that problem,” she said.
Mayor Mike Richman countered that perspective. “I would say the HAF isn’t just encouraging us to grow, it’s encouraging us to provide housing to manage the growth that we’re already experiencing,” he said.
“I don’t think that by subscribing to this, it’s saying, ‘OK, now go out and build as much as you can so that you can keep going as fast as you can to catch up.’ This is a way to help fund some of the initiatives that are identified through our housing strategy and our housing needs assessment … This is a way to get funds, perhaps, to support some of those initiatives.”
Ultimately, Pemberton’s Committee of the Whole moved to approve the action plan and direct staff to submit the application, with the caveats that the third initiative—encompassing the waiving of some public hearings—be removed and replaced with the infrastructure updates initiative.
