Will federal government’s 199 million dollar investment help address our housing crisis?

“The Conservatives, for their part, they’re essentially taking aim at what they call municipal gatekeepers. That’s not the problem in Northern B.C. They’re also talking about forcing density around transit hubs, which is is kind of laughable because in communities like Smithers or Terrace, we don’t have transit hubs, we barely have public transit.”

Many community members here in Prince George are feeling the difficulties of the housing crisis, including Crystal Lea Tennisco, who is currently renting with her 21 year old son. She used to be a home owner in Alberta and Saskatchewan before moving here in 2008, and since then she hasn’t been able to purchase a home. Despite combining their incomes to try and find a home to purchase, she says there still aren’t opportunities to get into the home ownership market.

“Homelessness is so much more closer now, there’s people that are just getting knocked off. And I’m feeling it just in like a decade, the difference from being a homeowner, being able to have a home. We both (Tennisco and her son) have savings, we both have RSPs that we’re going to be using to hopefully buy a home. But right now we’re just kind of letting it rest and see what happens with the market,” Tennisco says.

The market across the country isn’t looking promising. The average rental price is at around 22 hundred dollars, an 8.6% year over year increase, with the average home price sitting north of 650 thousand dollars. Here in Northern BC, we’re much lower, but still seeing increases, as average rent sits at just over 15 hundred dollars a month with the average home selling price currently at around 380 thousand dollars. For Tennisco, these prices, along with rising interest rates and inflation, means she can’t get back into home ownership despite continually trying to find more affordable options.

“First the interest rates just kept going up and up and up, and it pushed us out of the market again. At that time, I was going to be able to get a house with just a single income. A very small, modest home, but it would have at least given me and my children a safe place,” she said.

“As a mom, I just want a safe place for my kids. And I know there’s a lot of people that just want safe places to be, to live, to rest our bones.”

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by Tommy Osborne

Will federal government’s 199 million dollar investment help address our housing crisis?

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