Cariboo communities are getting more than 880 thousand dollars in provincial funding to help them to create more housing.
Quesnel is getting just over 195 thousand dollars.
Tanya Turner, the Director of Development Services, says it is to help them change their bylaws to all more housing on each lot.
She says that includes changes to the Official Community Plan and to zoning, as well as to do more work on their housing needs assessment.
“An interim update would be required by 2024, and a larger update to our housing needs assessment would be required by 2025, and that’s more in-depth. We’ll get some more parameters around exactly what is going to be required in the future under regulations. We don’t have all that right now, but we know it’s coming.”
Turner says the money is definitely helpful as smaller communities like Quesnel have to make the same changes as large cities like Vancouver and will definitely need additional resources.
She says the city made a recent step to prepare for all of this.
“The city is putting together what we’re calling a Housing Solutions Table because we know that we’re going to be doing a lot of housing development policy work. We’re going to utilize that table to help fetter some of those questions that we have for the community, as well as help us get all of our other housing goals. As you know housing has been a focus for the city for quite a long time and we’re doing quite a bit of work to increase housing across the spectrum.”
Williams Lake is getting just over 200 thousand dollars, 100 Mile House is receiving almost 159 thousand, and the Cariboo Regional District will get a cheque for more than 327 thousand dollars.
