Senior's Housing plans in south could provide blue print for Prince Rupert

Regular readers of the blog by now have noticed that through our portal we've been kind of stalking Housing Minister Rich Coleman on his Housing announcement tour of the southern part of the province over the last few weeks.

Taking notes of a range of affordable and Seniors housing projects that the Provincial government is providing funding for and examining what it is that the province seems to be looking for when it comes to expanding housing options across the province.

Some of the plans that the Housing Minister has been highlighting as part of tour include some ideas which might have be of some use to the ongoing issues of affordable housing on the North Coast, a topic which has been the main focus of Council since last years election.

The latest stop in our tag along with Rich, is a look at a Seniors Housing project in Peachland, with the Housing Minister taking us on a tour of the new Alexandra Court complex in that community.

A development which will see 68 new residences built for Seniors, making use of land provided by the City of Peachland, along with funding from BC Housing and subsidy assistance from the Province of British Columbia for those that may require it.

A look at the site and planned development can be found below.





The stop over in Peachland came the day before an announcement out of Enderby from Tuesday, where the BC Government outlined the details on another project that will see 36 more units of senior's housing would be added to that community, with the expansion of an existing Seniors facility there.

Among the many housing concerns that Prince Rupert housing has been trying to address over the last year, has been that very topic of Seniors Housing, an issue that both Councillor Nelson Kinney and Councillor Cunningham have both been strong advocates for.

So far however, there has been as Councillor Cunningham so correctly put it a few months back, a sense of spinning the wheels on the issue.

With Councillor Cunningham among the most engaged around the Council Chamber in expressing his frustration at times over the rather glacial approach to the housing concerns in the community.

From what we've discovered through our little tour with the Housing Minister it seems that once a community has identified some kind of a plan to put in place, the Province and BC Housing is providing the funding for those housing options.

Finding a way to get that groundwork in place and to speed up that process for the North Coast is an area where Council is going to need to start finding some traction on, otherwise we imagine that some council members may soon once again be bringing up the theme of spinning wheels and less than desired results.

For a look at the past conversations on housing at City Council see our archive page here.

Cross posted from the North Coast Review