Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking the member for Saskatoon West for bringing forward this important motion on Canada's housing crisis and what the government should be doing to deal with it.
The housing crisis is widespread and very diverse across the country. It is different in every community, every city, every rural area. It goes from rising homelessness to ridiculously expensive housing markets that exclude first-time buyers to rural seniors who have nowhere to go when they want to downsize to low vacancy rates that are often exacerbated, at least in my riding, by online vacation rentals to crowded and often mould-ridden homes in remote indigenous communities.
When I meet with mayors, business people and service groups in my riding, the priority they bring to me is almost always the same. It is housing, housing, housing.
I recently met with the mayor of Trail, which is a small city with plenty of issues facing it. It is home to one of the biggest lead zinc-smelters in the world, which owned by Teck, so international mining markets are important to Trail. The cost of power for that smelter is very important to Trail. The local hospital is in the middle of a big renovation, which is important. The local police force is understaffed. However, when I asked the mayor what her biggest priority was, she said housing.
When I went up to the road to the town of Fruitvale, the mayor said that his priority was a project they were working on. It is an old school property they purchased and want to demolish to build housing. However, it will cost $1 million just to demolish the old school, and Fruitvale is a very small town.
Just down the road is the village of Montrose, where there are only 420 homes. It needs housing for its seniors so they can stay in Montrose as they age instead of having to move to Trail or Castlegar.
When I talked recently with employment agencies in Oliver, B.C., I heard that many local businesses could not fill openings. Hotels were hiring and senior care homes were desperate for employees. Restaurants had signs on the tables apologizing for slow service, because they only had one waiter working. The reason was that the people needed to fill these positions could not find housing, so they moved on.
The most ironic story in this vein is about a service agency in Penticton that received grant money to coordinate its affordable housing program. It hired someone, who arrived, but the person gave up the job because they could not find housing.
This is a crisis that is hitting the Canadian economy. There are very personal impacts, but it is also hitting our economy. It is expensive for Canada as a whole to have this crisis going on.
We have heard that in 1993 the federal Liberal government abandoned the housing sector, a situation maintained by both Conservative and Liberal governments since then. We have heard that 1.7 million Canadians live in core housing need, but I would like to provide a perspective from riding of South Okanagan—West Kootenay.
The South Okanagan “Vital Signs” report provides a report card on many aspects of life in the west part of my riding. The report gives housing a C-, based on low vacancy rates, high rent cost and high housing debt levels. The rental vacancy rate in the area is around 1%, about half the national average. As well, 50% of renters in my hometown of Penticton are paying more than 30% of their income on rent.
I used to live in a little village called Naramata. The average house price there is $740,000. In Penticton, it is only $476,000. Who can afford that? What kind of young couple can afford to buy a house for $470,000? That is the average cost of a house.
Just east of the Okanagan Valley is the Kettle Valley, which suffered catastrophic flooding this spring. This is another kind of housing crisis. The city of Grand Forks lost many homes and businesses to the high waters of the Kettle and Granby rivers. It has created an emergency need for housing, and the local city council and regional district board have been working tirelessly for months to meet this need. The provincial government has come through with millions of dollars, and local governments are waiting to hear back on a significant ask to the federal disaster mitigation and adaptation fund, which would allow them to proceed with long-term solutions.
One of the big issues in rural areas is providing housing for seniors who want to stay in their hometowns and scale down to smaller homes so they do not have to take care of their large acreages. Much of my riding is rural, and a good example of that is the beautiful Slocan Valley. About 98% of the housing there is single detached homes.
About half of the Slocan Valley population is over 50 years of age now, and that proportion will increase dramatically over the next decade. About a quarter of those seniors are living below the poverty line. There are wait-lists of over 10 years to get into subsidized non-market housing in Nelson and Castlegar. As one community member put it, there is a community hall every 10 kilometres in this valley. We have schools and graveyards, but little to address seniors' housing needs and supports in between.
The Slocan Valley Seniors' Housing Society stepped up to the plate, and I want to spend some time outlining what this small but energetic and talented group of citizens, many of them seniors themselves, has accomplished. They started with plans for a 10-unit lodge in the community of Passmore. A massive community effort raised over $600,000 to help make Passmore Lodge a reality. Seniors and people of all ages hiked for housing around the silvery Slocan, a 250-kilometre loop, raising over $50,000.
Local sawmills donated the construction lumber and huge beams for the central common area. The beautiful birch cabinets and all the wainscotting were made locally. The common room's tables and chairs were designed and built by a Kootenay School of the Arts student. An agreement was negotiated with a general contractor to hire local EI reach-backs for some of the construction crew, bringing the costs down. The Real Estate Foundation and Vancouver Foundation dug deep, and the Columbia Basin Trust saw this community effort and stepped up. Finally, a $940,000 mortgage and an operating agreement were secured with BC Housing, and Passmore Lodge was opened in 1999.
Inspired by that success, the society immediately began plans for a similar project in the village of Slocan and has recently opened 12 units of affordable housing there. These are in very small communities. These huge efforts have been successful.
There are other success stories like that around my riding. In Okanagan Falls, the South Skaha Housing Society is building 26 units of affordable housing, and similar projects have gone on in Naramata and other communities.
I would like to move now to the topic of homelessness, which is a crisis within this housing crisis. Many might associate homelessness with urban areas, but it is just as tragic a situation in smaller towns and cities. We need government and community agencies to come together and simply create homes for the homeless.
Penticton has become a model case for this co-operative, integrated approach. An initiative called 100 Homes has brought together more than a dozen groups with a clear vision to house the homeless, and their project has been very successful. They have already exceeded their goal of 100 homes, having produced 133 units as of last July. They are now in the process of setting new goals, with a view to housing all of the 400 people in need in Penticton.
One of the valuable lessons that 100 Homes has learned in the past months is that funding is needed for support services, as well as the housing units themselves. Given both social support and a roof over their heads, many homeless people can quickly return to normal lives. Everywhere I go in my riding, I find groups that are doing amazing work for the homeless and other disadvantaged people.
In Trail, Career Development Services has a getting to home program that provides critical support for individuals who need to find a home. In Castlegar, there is Chrissy's Place, named in honour of Chrissy Archibald, a young woman who had dedicated her life to helping the homeless before being killed in a terrorist incident in London. While the focus of Chrissy's Place is not just on the homeless, it provides a wide range of supports for people in need through the Castlegar & District Community Services Society.
We need bold action from the government now to tackle this housing crisis. We have done it before. I grew up on a Veterans' Land Act subdivision in Penticton. I still live in the house I grew up in. After the war, the government built many thousands of homes across this country, to help the people returning from war and to rebuild this country. We can do that again. I am very happy to support this motion.