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The Whistler Housing Waltz

By G.D. Maxwell It’s the housing, stupid! One step forward; two steps back. One step forward; two steps back. That’s the way we do the Whistler Housing Waltz.

By G.D. Maxwell

It’s the housing, stupid!

One step forward; two steps back. One step forward; two steps back. That’s the way we do the Whistler Housing Waltz.

One step forward: The Whistler Housing Authority symbolically busts Evangeline Cannon for renting out her WHA 19-Mile Creek townhome last Christmas and Presidents’ Week. No offense Evangeline, but somebody had to take the fall and you’ll do as well as anybody. Your pleas of "I really do feel it’s our right to cash in on that (nightly rentals)," and "I know that a lot of people in Whistler do do it," don’t elicit much sympathy from this quarter.

The only reason you own your own housing in the first place is because there was a collective, societal will to create more affordable housing to begin with. That will was driven by the simple, yet profound, realization that the future energy and success of our happy mountain resort depended on finding a way of keeping more workerbees in situ instead of commuting from Pemberish or Squamton. In exchange for that monetarily valuable courtesy, you gave up certain property rights, the most important of which was your "right" to rent your property to anyone you please at any price you can get.

That’s the deal you made. Live with it or sell your property to one of the 400 people waiting for the chance to chafe under those oh so onerous terms.

That having been said, I can’t help wondering where Councillor Wells’ proposal to codify Whistler homeowners’ ability to engage in nightly rentals for a certain number of nights each year disappeared to. Remember that one? It was one of the hundred-and-one nifty ideas Kristi had while she was running for re-election a term or two ago. Seems those good ideas only surface at election time, then die a slow, neglected death once the votes have been counted.

But whether that was approved or not, it still wouldn’t be allowed under the WHA covenants… and that’s not a bad thing.

One step back: For as long as there’s been a Barnfield Estates, there’s been a simmering squabble between a small contingent of the Barnfield people and the WHA. It hasn’t been resolved yet and seems headed to court.

The lucky lottery winners in Barnfield got below-market priced lots and built their own homes. The deal was their home would be valued when complete – using admittedly complicated guidelines – and would be employee-restricted and subject to an upside valuation cap based on a complicated but mathematically discernible formula.

The problems – and there are many – arose because there were disagreements on establishing the value of the homes. Some people went overboard on high-end finishes and fixtures; some put considerable sweat equity into their homes by doing much of the building themselves; some… well, you get the picture.

Exacerbating this, depending on who you talk to, was a heavyhandedness and unreasonableness on the part of WHA to deal with these cases and an imbalance of power when it came to delivering what seemed on the surface to be ultimatums. Adding fire to the intractability on both sides was the inevitable surfacing of greed. While a relatively small group of homeowners pushed for ever higher valuation criteria, all homeowners realized if they succeeded everyone’s ship would float on the rising tide.

Enter the lawyers. The Barnfield people have now retained the same very tenacious and smart lawyer last engaged by Keith Lambert in fighting the Nita Lake Lodge project. And according to my sources, they are seeking not only a resolution of the valuation process but the lifting of the upside value cap.

The cap’s been beaten before. At Tapley’s it was finessed, resulting in the current million buck plus valuations, and there was simply no political will to impose workable caps at Lorimer Ridge. But clearly a valuation cap is the cornerstone to constructing any affordable scenario that doesn’t wind up unjustly enriching the lucky few and slamming future workerbees out of owing their own home.

Whether the "blame" for failing to reach valuations in Barnfield lies on one side or the other isn’t really the issue here. The issue is the intention both sides had to build "affordable" housing. Let’s face it, without the resale cap, there’s no role for WHA to play in creating and managing employee housing – below market buy-ins are first-come first-served and a one shot deal for the few and the fortunate. Should this debacle go to court, let’s hope we draw a judge with a social conscience.

And another step back: I can’t say this gently and there’s no real need for a long-winded lead in. Councillor Davies should resign as head of the WHA board. That’s not easy to say because I like Nick personally and I think he’s a pretty smart guy but his comments last week – and his unconscionable subdivision proposal for his own lot – clearly indicate he shouldn’t be leading the charge on the housing front.

The subdivision proposal Nick put forward for his lot in Alpine may or may not have merit beyond the facile, i.e., allowing a homeowner to subdivide his lot, stay in a place he loves, build a new partly-restricted home from the proceeds of the sale of the other half of his lot and pocket the remaining equity.

But it’s not appropriate for a sitting councillor to throw the planning, zoning and subdivision approval process into disrepute by proposing a scheme that clearly lines his own pockets while he sits on council. And it’s even more inappropriate for the chair of the housing authority to cloak the proposal in a façade of altruism by hanging a resident employee restriction on it and presenting it as something that will somehow have a positive effect on the very problems he is now charged with wrestling to the ground.

Full marks on innovative thinking, Nick; bad marks on monumental conflict of interest. This isn’t something you can excuse yourself on unless you’re excusing yourself from both positions.

More importantly, the interview in last week’s Pique reveals a profound lack of understanding and empathy for the issue of affordable housing. If it’s a rip-roaring public outcry you’re waiting for, I’m pretty sure I know where I can find 400 or more people to turn up the heat and clog the e-mail of every councillor, the mayor, the municipal administrator and anyone else we have to convince that it’s time to move housing out of the endless planning cycle it’s been mired in and into construction.

Ironically, it just might also be by asking those 400 people that you could come up with a few good ideas on what to build, where to build it and even innovative ways to accomplish it without waiting for the sustainability study to be finished, waiting for the Olympics to come and go, waiting for 400 people to give up and leave town and let Whistler cope with running a world-class resort with a totally transient workforce.

It’s the housing. Get on with it!