City of Terrace among BC local governments to gain funding for housing approvals process

When it comes to moving forward towards development of housing stock in their community, the City of Terrace now has a bit of a leg up on the rest of the Northwest. 

That as the Province of British Columbia awards Terrace officials with over 300,000 dollars from a local government program to help streamline housing approvals.

The program funding which was delivered to 43 communities province wide, was introduced today by Josie Osborne, Minister of Municipal Affairs.

“Local governments play a critical role in making sure the housing people need in their communities is built quickly and meets local needs. These grants will help them do critical work to modernize development permitting and approvals by removing barriers and streamlining processes. Together, the Province, local governments, housing providers and builders can find solutions that support more affordable housing for everyone in B.C.”

The focus for the Funding program was outlines as follows:

The Local Government Development Approvals Program is supporting local governments in their efforts to improve their development approvals processes – helping people and communities get the homes they need built faster and help support economic recovery. 

The projects represent a wide range of actions local governments have identified will help them improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their development approval process, allowing them to better meet the needs of their communities. 

Projects include everything from conducting internal reviews of current development approvals processes, to identifying opportunities for improvement, upgrading to online development application platforms, and developing workshops or seminars to help developers better understand the application requirements.

The Terrace application gained the community $385,000 to be put to use towards Terrace Development Permit Application Improvements.

The program was open to all municipalities, regional districts and the Islands Trust, and is administered by the Union of British Columbia Municipalities on behalf of the Province. 

Terrace was the only one of those in the Northwest to be listed in today's funding announcement.

More on the program can be reviewed here.

The full list of the successful applicants is available here.

Past notes on Municipal themes from Terrace can be found from our archive page here.

A similar archive for Prince Rupert is available here.

Cross posted from the North Coast Review.