Ha7lh skwáyel. My name is Sarah Silva. I'm a member of the Squamish Nation and I'm also the CEO of Hiy̓ám̓ Housing Society.
To give you a little bit about the Squamish Nation, we are located in British Columbia, in Vancouver and Squamish. Our traditional territory expands all the way to Whistler and Vancouver as well. Squamish Nation is the second-largest nation in B.C. We have approximately 4,000 members.
Half of our members live outside of our community. Most of the reserves in north Vancouver and in the Vancouver area are now overcrowded. Unfortunately, because of the housing crisis, many of our members are being forced to live outside of our community and more into rural areas. Of course, the cost of rent is causing all sorts of different issues within our community, being that they cannot live within the community or in the traditional territory. They don't have a lot of money left over to spend on things like hydro, education and food.
Our Squamish Nation council, approximately two years ago, set a bold initiative to bring all of our Squamish Nation members home within a generation. We define a generation at 25 years. Housing is our peoples' number one priority. As the cost of living continues to rise in our historical traditional territory, it's even more important than ever to bring our people home and have a range of different options within our community.
Hiy̓ám̓ Housing Society is a not-for-profit organization. We are responsible for building and managing affordable housing for our community. Currently we have three projects in the works. We have two projects that are funded under the CMHC rapid housing initiative. We also have one that's funded through B.C. Housing under the community housing fund. All of our current projects are very needed, but they all have culturally appropriate design and also supports.
Again, we have a lot of poor living conditions and overcrowded homes that are very present in our community. We have elders and families and young children living in condemned homes that unfortunately have such issues as mould. This is having a negative effect on our children's well-being, as the lack of affordable and culturally safe housing has had harmful outcomes on health and educational outcomes. Again, because of the high cost of rent, there isn't a lot of money left over for other essential needs, such as food and heat.
We also have a lot of our members living outside of the community facing undignified living conditions. A lot of landlords, unfortunately, are not treating them appropriately. They are facing a lot of different barriers outside of the community. There's a real drive for us to bring our community members home.
As this new fund is being created, we hope it's taken into consideration that each first nation has their own diverse needs. For the Squamish Nation, our desire is to bring our community members home. Our desire is to have them within culturally appropriate housing and to have them be able to go to our schools, practice culture and have that deep connection to our land, our territory and our families.
For us, we face our own barriers within our community. We are under the Indian Act. A variety of different barriers do exist under the Indian Act that a lot of other outside communities don't quite understand. What we are noticing with some of the CMHC funding that's coming out is that, a lot of the time, outside organizations or governments define affordability based on non-indigenous communities.
In our communities we've done a lot of work. We have our own governance structure. We have our internal processes. We're doing a lot of our own data collection on housing need and demand. What we're realizing after looking at our data is that, with a lot of the other governments, the programming of their level of affordability is really for the outside communities and doesn't reflect the needs and the income levels of our community. I hope the funding will be flexible and will allow for the first nations to define their levels of affordability.
Again, we have our own—