Despite the best efforts of local organizations and agencies,
the seasonal housing situation in Whistler isn’t improving.
Whistler-Blackcomb’s staff housing is already full, the
Whistler Housing Authority’s H.O.M.E. matching program has yet to turn up a
match, and local classifieds are looking sparse.
Brian Good, manager of Whistler-Blackcomb’s staff accommodation
— often referred to as House — is also responsible for finding 88
beds in the valley for WB’s ski and snowboard instructors. So far, they’ve
managed to find 68 beds, and Good says staff is working hard to find the
additional 20. But it hasn’t been easy.
While finding seasonal housing is usually tough, Good believes
this year has been worse than others for a few reasons: the quickly-approaching
Olympics, great snow the last two winters, the influx of construction workers,
and the absence of one WHA rental building.
“Last year I would have said, ‘oh, you know, there’s a bit of
hype,’” said Good.
“This is the first year where all of those factors… have made a
noticeable impact on the availability on valley house beds.”
Good says Whistler-Blackcomb recognized this would be a
challenging year for seasonal housing, so they added 61 new beds to House to
try and create more space, and he is also trying to turn the construction
situation around, contacting companies to see when workers will be leaving and
preparing to take over the beds they leave behind.
But Karen Bauckham, recruiting manager for Whistler-Blackcomb,
says the company is hiring for about 1,000 positions at their annual job fair
this week and won’t have housing for all of them.
Bauckham attributes the increased demand for housing to a
recent shift in their recruiting operations. Earlier this year, WB pre-hired
about 500 people in an effort to create more security for new staff and the
company.
“We only have so many beds, so by the time we put beds aside
for our pre-hires and for some of the other programs that we have, we had about
300-plus beds left for the recruiting fair,” said Bauckham.
And efforts to turn up additional housing have been
frustrating.
Councillor Ralph Forsyth, committee co-chair of WHA’s H.O.M.E.
program, says so far, no homeowners have signed onto their matching project and
only five employers have signed up, despite their advertising campaign. Forsyth
says he doesn’t know why people are hesitant to get involved, but is frustrated
by the lack of response from the community.
He says the H.O.M.E. program mitigates risks for owners and
would solve the problem for a lot of local businesses, but people need to “step
up and participate.”
“Everyone thinks that this is somebody else’s problem, but it’s
not — it’s everyone’s problem,” Forsyth said.
“… It is the issue in the resort — there’s nothing more
important than this.”
The WHA’s Nesters Pond building is also still out of commission
from flooding earlier this year, which means many residents of the 37-unit
building are still displaced. Though the WHA had planned to have the building
ready by the fall, repairs were more extensive than anticipated, and they now
hope work will be complete by the end of the year, which should open up more
beds at that time.
General manager Marla Zucht
says the WHA’s focus has always been on developing long-term
resident-restricted housing, which helps ease the strain on the private rental
situation.
“When a tenant or an owner moves into one of our units, it
opens up an opportunity for seasonal housing,” she explained.
This year, their weekly tracking of rental units shows there
are fewer available than in previous years. Zucht says it is similar to the
housing situation they faced in the winter of 2002.
They have also been trying to help with the seasonal housing
shortage with new initiatives, like the H.O.M.E. program and Accommodation
Seeker. Accommodation Seeker, which was launched about a month ago, is an
online service that allows people in need of accommodation to post a personal
profile and list the type of accommodation they are seeking.
While she hasn’t heard of any success stories yet, Zucht says
the service has been attracting quite a bit of traffic.
Zucht says the WHA receives many calls from people scrambling
for housing, and recommends scouring local classifieds and WHA’s website
listings, and using word-of-mouth.
“Quite often, the better accommodations may not hit the paper,
so when you’re in the pubs or the bookstore or the library, you know, just talk
to people.”
In the long-term, Zucht points out that they will have 55 units
in the athletes’ village after the 2010 Olympics, some of which will be smaller
units that target a specific demographic.
But in the short-term, they’re still looking for solutions.
“We’re looking at some other opportunities for some temporary
accommodations, as well, to put onto some existing sites.”
WB’s Good says they have also made some very simple changes to
the way House is run this year. First, they changed their website to ensure
people enroll for the job fair before applying for staff housing. As of last
week, 1,500 people had registered for interviews.
“Whereas before, anybody would move in and we’d talk to them
about the fact that they had to be staff, but they could use this for
short-term accommodation, whether or not they were really truly planning to
work for us or not.”
They’ve also separated their waitlist, creating one list, for
people who have applied for the fair but haven’t been hired yet, and then an
actual waiting list for confirmed employees. As of Oct. 29, there were 475
people on the applicant list and 29 people on the waitlist. Anyone offered jobs
will be moved off the applicant list and onto the waitlist, then into House as
beds become available.
In September, Good says they knew most of their beds were
spoken for in the upcoming season, so they let staff know that they should
start looking for alternate housing arrangements for the upcoming season.
This year, staff housing will be for first-year employees only.
“We used to be able to keep a few returning seasonal staff, and
now what we say is we still value them as much or more than anybody, but
they’ve learned the ins and outs of Whistler,” said Good.
Jodi Annett, coordinator of the Whistler Employment Resources
Centre, says they are expecting 800 to 1,000 job seekers at their annual job
fair, and have had about 40 employers sign up. She says finding a place for
employees to live is high on the priority list of many companies looking to
hire in Whistler this year.
“Employers are definitely focusing more on providing housing to
potential staff now, more so now than in the past, so that’s part of their
recruiting strategy.”
The WERC fair will be held on November 13, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Telus Conference Centre, and the Whistler-Blackcomb fair began Tuesday and runs through Nov. 10 at the Blackcomb Daylodge.