Town Council is not impressed by an email they recently received from Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon.
Previously, BC Housing has declared the houses “unfit for occupation” and scheduled them for demolition.
“These units have been vacant for a long time,” Malachy Tohill, BC Housing’s Regional Director told council back in 2020. “When we looked at them nine years ago, it would have cost us nearly $2.5 million to fix them up.”
He says a lot of the issues are foundational. “They have wood foundations, and they’re in very bad condition. They also have single pane aluminum windows, which would have to be taken out. There are also siding and roofing issues. And, from a fiscal responsibility point of view, spending $40,000 to $50,000 per year just to keep the lights on in those buildings seems to be a waste after a while.”
He says they were having no applications for people to live in the units, and most of them have been vacant since at least 2014, and to just let the buildings sit means they are getting progressively worse.
Even in May of last year, when BC Housing came to town, Tohill stated the houses were coming down. “We wanted to take those places down three years ago, but then Covid hit, as well as other issues. We are going to get them down; I hear the importance of getting that done. I understand the safety issues around them, with kids breaking windows and all that. The last thing we want is to have them looking like a bunch of slum houses.”
In June, council requested clarity from the minister regarding Chamberlain Place.
In his response, Kahlon expresses his appreciation for the hard work by the town “to ensure those most vulnerable in your community have safe, suitable and affordable homes.”
But there was no timeline given, and so the community is still unsure what will happen with the properties and, more importantly, if they’ll be replaced.
In his letter, Minister Kahlon says that “as owner of the property, BC Housing encourages the District of Tumbler Ridge to identify and bring forward an operator and a redevelopment proposal for Chamberlain Place during the next Community Housing Fund (CHF) call.”
While there was a call back in November of 2023, Kahlon says another call will come in 2024.
“If the proposal is successful and an operator can be secured, BC Housing would be willing to enter a leasehold arrangement with the operator to support the project. If the District and a potential operator compile a CHF proposal draft, BC Housing could meet with the proponents to help strengthen the application/proposal in advance of the evaluation process. BC Housing is committed to fair procurement practices and a proposal strengthening discussion is open to all serious proponents who request it.”
Councillor Norbury says he feels like they’re kicking the can down the road, putting the responsibility on the town, when it’s really BC Housing’s job. “It sounded to me like BC Housing was committed to taking down the buildings and rebuilding them,” he says. “This seems like it’s telling us that they support us applying to the community housing fund to do it ourselves. These are not our properties. This is BC Housing’s responsibility and we need to hold them accountable to either fix them or tear them down. We also need to hold them responsible to meet the needs in our community.”
Mayor Krakowka says he’s reached out to see if he can meet with the minister when he’s in Vancouver. “I thought our original meeting went well,” says the mayor. “He was well prepared, with the right people in the room or on Zoom. The action from the ministry was quick and very quickly we had a meeting in person in Tumbler Ridge. It’s after that when things have gone nowhere. Maybe he’s not understanding my emails. We’re looking for the follow-up that was promised by BC Housing at that meeting. They said they were going to come back into the community and dialogue with our residents on what the actual need was. That’s the problem I have. BC Housing hasn’t come back, that dialogue hasn’t been had. That was a promise made with council in attendance and with our residents and to me, I thought that was the next step.”
Councillor Gulick says she hopes the mayor can line up a meeting. “Then I can be in there with you just so I can look grumpy,” she says. “I absolutely took this the same way as Councillor Norbury: they are just kicking the can back our way. I absolutely don’t think this is our problem. The housing belongs to BC Housing. I’m actually a little dumbfounded by the whole thing. It’s like they are deliberately misunderstanding.”
The mayor says Tumbler Ridge doesn’t have a huge homeless population. “I don’t want to say there’s not a homeless issue in Tumbler Ridge. I believe there’s people that are going from couch to couch. We may not have people that are living outside at this time—maybe there is but I’m not aware of it—but to me the point of having low cost housing is it actually helps the single moms and the single dads in the community. It allows them to get into housing that is affordable. I don’t think it’s our job to start starting up organizations and applying for grants.”
Councillor Hofman wonders if the town needs to spend some time looking at what the needs are. “There’s a fraction of housing that was available a few years ago,” he says. “Whether it’s low cost or not, we don’t have a lot of excess space. If there’s another mine expansion or mine opening we’ll have less space and then we’re going to need housing and not housing three years from then but housing six months from then.”
He suggests the town prepare for what they want from BC Housing. “We should prepare something where we’re flat out saying ‘we want X.’ I don’t know what X is yet. Then they can come back and say ‘we’re not going to do that.’ Then we can ask ‘what are you going to do?’ We need to push it forward because it doesn’t seem like they want to. I don’t think sitting on our hands is going to get anything done, and I don’t think we’re going to have a community-based group come forward as an operator. The sooner we push and push as hard as we can the sooner something’s going to happen.”
Councillor Noksana says the letter doesn’t address the fact that BC Housing has condemned the properties. “We were told this spring that these are dangerous. They’re condemned. They need to go. They’re going to come down. It’s happening. We all agreed ‘fine this is going to happen,’ but it hasn’t, and as of this spring they were highly targeted and being broken into vandalized regularly. That was tying up valuable emergency responder time. We’re sitting here months later and they’re still standing. I have no idea if they’re still being targeted but there’s nothing in this letter about them coming down. We need to know when this is happening as well.”
Mayor Krakowka says he’s wondering if Minister Kahlon just doesn’t have all the information. “I’ll be honest, we haven’t had a direct dialogue with him. I’m wondering if he’s not getting the full report back from his staff.”
Councillor Klikach agrees with the rest of council that this is not Tumbler Ridge’s responsibility. “I think that we should push it right back on them and tell them to get it done.” He also doesn’t believe the housing needs to be torn down. “I don’t think it’s was bad enough to tear down when the report came out that it couldn’t be repaired, and I don’t think it’s changed much since. Yes, there’s been a few break-ins. They need windows and siding. They need dressing-up: new roofs and siding and stuff like that. There was a lot of furnaces that were changed, all kinds of things were done to improve them, like new cabinets. I believe it wouldn’t take that much to finish them off and be able to rent them out.
Council is pursuing further dialogue with the minister.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
