ATHABASCA – Town of Athabasca councillors are looking at ways to fix the housing shortage in the community, including the possibility of submitting an application to a one-time program from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).
During their June 20 council meeting, councillors voted 7-0 in favour of deferring a request for decision (RFD) that asked councillors to review the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) at their July 11 council meeting which will allow CAO Rachel Ramey time to discuss the possibility of contracting out Athabasca County’s new grant writer.
“The recommendation here is that council review the HAF. The application continues information for encouraging new home builds in communities; having gone through it it’s multi-faceted, and it isn’t just a town council initiative. It’s broader, it takes in FCSS, (Athabasca) Cares, our construction industry,” said Coun. Ida Edwards, who brought forward the RFD.
It was clear that council was interested in the grant, which appears to be a one-time thing; there will be 45-day window for applications which will hand out $4 billion over the next four years, and it is unlikely to happen again after that. The issue for councillors was cost as the town doesn’t have any money budgeted for the grant application. Mayor Rob Balay agreed with Ramey that it was probably between a 40-to-80-hour project.
“I think this has regional connotations as well,” said Balay. “This is something that could fall under the scope of work for the new economic development committee as well, not to say that we would pawn it all off on them. If we are to meet the 45-day application window, I think that we would need to contract out the work.”
In a June 21 e-mail, Ramey said that they didn’t yet have an estimate for how much the contract would cost the town.
HAF, according to a 45-minute video on CMHC’s website, is a new investment by the federal government to encourage local governments to implement initiatives that will speed up housing development and increase supply. The challenge for Athabasca will be finding the space for new develop to occur as according to Ramey, the town has a shortage of lots that are both connected to utilities and undeveloped.
“Just to play devil’s advocate a little bit, we take a run at this funding stream, and we go through the hoops; at what point do we attract development, for someone that’s going to come in and actually build that housing,” asked Balay.
“The two comments I got, talking with a realtor and a developer in our community, both clearly stated the importance of our thriving community,” said Coun. Sara Graling, who had done a fair amount of research into the proposal as well. “Where’s the incentive to bring people into our community. I think we’re at a very tight vacancy with respect to our housing situation, but from a growth perspective it’s something they both very clearly stated.”
