New Squamish Nation housing complex offers multigenerational homecoming

A complex on the Capilano Reserve is providing 95 units of much-needed housing, bringing the Squamish Nation closer to its goal of eliminating a waitlist.

A new, 95-unit housing complex on the Squamish Nation’s Capilano Reserve has provided a homecoming for some nation members who have lived off-reserve for decades.

Completed late last year, the new building hosted an official opening ceremony Tuesday as band members celebrated the culmination of six years of work by the nation’s Hiy̓ám̓ Housing Society.

“The vision was really to be able to bring the community home and to really support intergenerational living,” said Sarah Silva, one of the society’s directors.

“So, we really wanted to ensure that we honoured the longhouse living with the elders supporting the youth.”

Anneliese Vonkanel shares a two-bedroom apartment with her eight-year-old son and says she’s grateful he has the opportunity to connect with Squamish Nation culture every day now that they live on the reserve.

It’s something she didn’t get to do when she was growing up.

“I didn’t always know I was Squamish. I didn’t really know what it meant to be Indigenous because I was part of the ‘60s Scoop,” Vonkanel told CTV News. “So I grew up with non-Indigenous parents.”

After reconnecting with her roots more than a decade ago, she added her name to the Squamish Nation housing waitlist and late last year was finally able to move into the new building.

It has a mix of apartment sizes and townhomes, and rents are mixed, with some geared to income and others coming in at the low end of market rates.

The complex is the first of many in a plan to eliminate a housing waitlist that once contained more than 1,000 names, with an estimated wait time of 30 years.

The most ambitious project to date is the 6,000-rental-unit Senakw development under construction at the south end of the Burrard Bridge.

When finished, it will include several hundred homes set aside specifically for nation members.

“We’re working on a five-year strategic plan,” said Squamish spokesperson Wilson Williams.

“But we have a generational plan to move our people home within a generation. And that is something that is coming to fruition now.”

Wilson’s own mother lives in the building, along with an aunt that hadn’t lived on-reserve in more than 50 years.

For Vonkanel, her homecoming is about much more than the roof over her family’s heads.

“It means the world to me to be able to have him growing up with culture and learning it from such a young age,” she said about her son. “A lot of us didn’t get the chance to do that.”