 |
| Councillor Cunningham raised a number of concerns over the progress of the city's approach to affordable housing issues |
At the City Council session Councillor Cunningham offered up some of the frustration that he has expressed in the past, concerns that are shared by some in the community when it comes to the city's movement on the issue, with a portion of a presentation on planning for Major projects from City Planner Zeno Krekic making for the spark to the conversation on the night.
Picking out a few items from the previous talking points from the presentation, the Councillor noted how Council has been discussing the topic of affordable housing for over a year and still has yet to find much movement on the issue when it comes to anything appearing on the ground.
On the theme of the past studies as outlined by Mr. Krekic, Mr. Cunningham was particularly concerned with how the City, having done close to twelve months of work on data collection when it comes to housing issues, was now still looking to determine information from data study and how adding even more time to the wait isn't providing the kind of results he would like to see.
"We've spent a lot of time on housing, we still don't have a lot of the statistics that we need and I don't know, like one year seems to be a long time to be waiting for statistics ... some of us feel that we don't even need the statistics we know we have a problem and it needs to be addressed. " -- Councillor Barry Cunningham noting some of his frustration at the pace of addressing affordable housing issues in the community.
Going further, the Councillor highlighted some of the issues related to housing in the community that continue to get worse while the City still looks to get more information.
To try and address some of Councillor Cunningham's concerns, the Mayor provided his synopsis as to some of the items that the Housing committees have been working on and the state of progress as to where their work is at to this point. Noting how it's an issue that is going to require some patience in the community and that he believes that it is an issue that will get done this year.
Later in the council session the Mayor expanded on some of the progress from the Housing committee, highlighting for Council that the Housing Innovation Group will have a draft report ready by March with Shauna Wouters hired as a consultant and acting as the leader of the group.
Hew also noted that in future months Council will be required to engage in a workshop environment with the planner to hone in on a site location appropriate for Affordable housing and then to work with the Housing Group to figure out what the proposal would be.
The third point was a review of his points from earlier in the evening of the need to act on his notice of motion for a policy group to develop those affordable housing policies.
He wrapped up his short review by expressing satisfaction with the traction that housing concerns are gaining at the Council level.
You can review the exchanges between Councillor Cunningham and the Mayor as well as the short review of the Housing committee progress through the City's Video Archive.
Some of the discussion on Affordable housing and Councillor Cunningham's questions on the issue can be found starting at the 25 minute mark, while the Mayors Housing Report to Council starts at the 1 hour forty two minute point.
More items from Monday's City Council meeting can be found on our Timeline feature.
For more items related to Housing in Prince Rupert see our archive page here.
Further background on City Council discussions can be found examined on our Council Archive page.
Cross posted from the North Coast Review
No comments:
Post a Comment