Affordable housing development coming to Banff as vacancy rate bottoms out

Banff will be getting more affordable housing, thanks to a new development.

Banff will begin building an affordable housing development as the town struggles with high rents and low vacancy.

Sherry McEwen has lived in Banff for 10 years and has always struggled with affordable housing, at first for herself, and now for the employees of the thrift shop she owns.

“Prices have gone up considerably, I remember not wanting to spend $700 on a one-bedroom and now, you are lucky to find one bedroom in a four-bedroom house for $700,” she said.

It’s a constant problem for the mountain town, which is constrained from growing by the fact that it’s located in a national park. Parks Canada released 14 lots to the town a year ago, and now that they will be developed, there is hope for people struggling with housing. Town staff had seen that struggle up close and say it’s heartbreaking.

“From a single mom with two teenaged boys who was living in a makeshift apartment in a parkade with all the exhaust fumes coming in, to an individual who was living in the garage of a friend of the family where there was no plumbing, no heating and he lived on a mattress on the floor in the garage and that was his home, to over at Bear Street under the ramp to go up into the senior’s centre we would often find a mattress stuck underneath, single women in their 50s living in their cars for the wintertime, common,” said Sharon Oakley, Housing Sustainability Coordinator.

She saw very little improvement in recent years, especially with the economic downturn.

“Based on the studies from 2012, if we continue on the trajectory of growth that we are currently on, we are short 430 to 755 units, so it’s a significant shortage, so we have zero vacancy, it has been like that for three years,” she said.

She is excited to see that the town will now build a $22 million affordable housing project which will provide 132 units reserved for people who fall under the CMHC’s affordability guideline of 32 per cent of income used for housing, saying it’s good for them and good for the town.

“It impacts everyone, from people who come here that can’t find a place to live and then they leave and we have less employees to work for the businesses, we are a tourist community, the need is across the board,” she said.

Sherry McEwen is pleased as well, and hopes the development will make a difference for the many people living in inadequate housing.

“This new affordable housing thing sounds like it will be a good idea, it will be nice to see what the actual prices are at the end of it, but it’s hard on all ends, there are very few places for rent and the ones that are, they cost a lot of money,” she said.

The project is expected to break ground in January and will take 20 months to build. To learn more, check out the town’s website.