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Glut of employee housing by 2010 raises concerns

500 new units on the books for next five years, but costs continue to increase

Whistler’s for-purchase employee housing inventory will almost double in the next five years, signaling a new chapter in the community’s growth.

More than 500 new units could be built and sold to Whistler employees by the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, adding to the 588 existing units already owned by employees, built over the past 20 years.

"We’re in a really dynamic period here where there could be an enormous change in the demographic and the number of residents that are in or out of affordable housing," said Mayor Ken Melamed, after the public hearing for one of the municipality’s major housing projects, the 2010 Olympic athletes’ village.

According to the business plan, the athletes’ village will deliver 250 housing units. At the other end of town, the Rainbow development will deliver at least 235 units of employee housing. In between there are smaller developments on the horizon: 34 units at the Shoestring Lodge, 30 units in Function Junction, and Intrawest is still planning to build up to 30 units at Cedar Glen in Spring Creek.

Only last year the community was clamouring for housing as the Whistler Housing Authority waitlist ballooned to 500 separate applications. Now community members are wondering: will there be enough uptake to fill all the housing on the books and will Whistler’s workers be able to afford it given the rapidly rising cost of construction?

"Everybody who follows affordable housing has to be concerned about this next period of time," said the mayor. "We’ve got a big waitlist, we know we have big demand. And we’ve got two projects supplying a whole lot of (housing). There are going to be some dramatic changes and it’s hard really to predict what the outcomes will be.

"We don’t want to end up at the end of the day with oversupply and property sitting empty in the athletes’ village. We’ve got to be sure that there’s uptake to manage our risk."

One suggestion to manage that risk was broached by community member Stuart Munro at the athletes’ village public hearing on Thursday, June 22. He believes an independent assessor should canvass the waitlist to determine how much uptake is there and how much workers can really afford. The same exercise, he said, needs to be done with all major employers in Whistler at least at the mid-management level.

"The first step… is to tap down on the waitlist, drill down to get some real honest answers from people," he said.

Answers to questions such as: how much money do you make, how much money do you have to put down on a house, and can you afford half a million dollars for a price-restricted duplex unit?

And, he asks, would a family currently living in a three-bedroom employee housing unit be able to spend an extra $250,000 to move up into a single family employee housing unit?

"I don’t believe we have the answers to these questions," said Munro.

He added that Whistler should know those answers by mid-August before the two major developments get council’s final approval.

"If we don’t do this right this will have major implications not only for the community financially but also in terms of people’s expectations on housing," said Munro.

"I think we could definitely find over the next couple of years 500 people, or families, to buy these properties. But they need to be the right type and they need to be sold at the right price."

No one is more aware of that than WHA general manager Marla Zucht, who is in charge of the organization that manages not only the employee housing rental units but also the purchase units.

The waitlist has just been updated and is sitting at more than 500 separate applications. Every year, she said, 100 more applications come into the WHA. The list is growing all the time, particularly when new projects come on the horizon. At the same time there are roughly 100 applicants on the waitlist who would like to move from their existing employee housing units into a bigger unit, freeing up more inventory in the existing stock.

The bulk of the waitlist applicants are pre-approved for mortgages in the range of $150,000 to $350,000.

And while 500 new units in five years is certainly bucking the past trends which saw about 40 new units added to the inventory a year, Zucht said they won’t all be coming on at once. The Rainbow development will be sold in three phases, and the athletes’ village could be sold through pre-sales in the years leading up to the Games.

"I think that if we hit that (appropriate) mix of units there will certainly be less risk of a problem for absorption," she said. "I think there still is a strong enough demand."

She does not believe there is a need to canvass the waitlist through an independent third party as waitlisters must disclose their financial information and get pre-approved with a mortgage broker before getting on the list.

"It’s a good news thing that we are actually getting this many locals housing units coming on," she said. "It’s something that we should be embracing, not being scared of."

The WHA will be holding a community forum to answer questions about employee housing in July.