ASK Salt Spring: Answered - Ep. 43 Justine Starke

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Ep. 43 of Ask Salt Spring Answered in which we talk to Justine Starke about a Capital Regional District pilot project called the Rural Housing Program which, if it gets CRD funding, will provide a matching $40,000 grant to people wishing to develop a cottage or secondary suite on their property for affordable rent.

you're listening to ask salt spring answered in which we talk to justine stark who is the rural housing program lead a pilot project by the crd to look at ways of increasing secondary housing on Salt Spring Island and the other Gulf Islands with regards to a new exciting grant program. pilot project of the CRD, right? And Justine is a long-term planner and she's also very experienced with Salt Spring Island, right? So you were born here? No, I wasn't born here. I did live here for a number of years and I kicked off my planning career here working at Islands Trust and I still have family and a place to call home here. Okay, great. All right. So this project is basically a program that's being developed that will help people who are interested in expanding secondary housing units on Salt Spring Island and the other Gulf Islands, right?

Maybe you can just explain a little bit about it. Sure. So the Rural Housing Program is a pilot project of the Capital Regional District's board to look at ways that housing needs can be addressed in our small rural island communities that are different kinds of solutions than tend to be advanced in the more urban municipalities of the CRD. So the pilot project is just for Salt Spring in the Southern Gulf Islands electoral area. So it's Salt Spring in

Maine, Galliano, Pender, Saterna. And it's looking at investing some funding that still needs to be approved by the CRD board, but investing some funding that we can be used to give property owners a financial incentive to build accessory dwelling units, so secondary suites or cottages, in order to provide a rental housing unit for someone in the community. And the deal is going to be modeled after the provincial secondary suites incentive program that's being run by BC Housing, where the province is giving people $40,000 forgivable loans that are paid back 20% a year over five years. And the loan can be used to renovate a house, to put in a secondary suite or build a garden suite or a cottage. And in order to have the loan forgiven,

the province needs to see demonstration that the unit is being rented to somebody at an affordability rate for that region. And then they would be forgiven the loan if they meet those standards, is that correct? Yeah. And so the CRD wants to develop a parallel program that would be stackable with the provincial program so that we could also offer a $40,000 forgivable incentive in order for people to build secondary suites. So $80,000 altogether if this goes through, right? If people applied to both programs and if this goes through, yes. And you will, I think you said, will appoint a staff coordinator at some point to help people navigate the hurdles that they face to do this.

I guess there's a zoning difficulties and permits and all that kind of stuff, right? Yeah, right. So the Rural Housing Program is a new thing for the CRD. It gives the CRD the capacity to address needs in the rural communities, and the funding in order to hire coordinators come through a partnership with the Southern Gulf Islands Tourism Partnership. So this is actually getting funded by accommodation tax from Airbnbs and short-term vacation rentals. And with the funding that the Southern Gulf Islands Tourism Partnership is giving us, we can hire a coordinator.

And the role of the coordinator will be to administer the funding programs and the grant programs we want to develop. But it'll also be to support nonprofits and individuals to navigate achieving affordable housing. So it wouldn't necessarily be to answer zoning questions but it would help people find their way to Islands Trust and maybe help them ask the right questions. Right okay now you have a website that has a report on it that's part of the CRD website is that correct? That's right. It's an interactive website.

It's a rural housing program at the CRD. If you Google that, you'll find it. Okay, great. Okay, I'm sure people would like to read some of that. Now, you've done an analysis on cost to build, I gather, and other aspects of what people would face on this. And I think you said that based on your figures, that really this money would only make feasible renovating a secondary suite, not building a brand new cottage. Is that correct? Yeah, well, just the costs of building are high. And so we've done some analysis about what level of subsidy would help kind of bring the cost down and cover the cost to the point where someone, it would be like a help to support making the decision to put in a suite. So we think the lowest cost is renovating an existing house

to put in a one-bedroom secondary suite. And so that's probably the low-hanging fruit for a $40,000 subsidy. But everybody's got a unique situation, and there might be people who can bring their costs down because they're doing the work themselves or have a building that is less expensive to bring up to code in order to have a cottage. So there would be other opportunities. Okay. Now, you're doing a survey, a public outreach survey. When is that actually launching, and where can people find that? Yeah, so if you go to the Rural Housing Program at CRD website

and you hit subscribe for updates, we will send out a link to the survey when it's announced. It's going to be launched in September. And then you'll also receive updates about the Rural Housing Program as it goes to decision by the CRD board at the end of October. Right. Now, we got into quite a wide-ranging discussion about housing needs and that kind of thing. At one point, you said that I think there are 400 properties that could qualify for this under existing zoning in terms of cottage rentals or suites or whatever, right?

Yeah, I'm not sure the exact number of properties that have zoning to put in a suite or a cottage. We talked about one bylaw that allowed 400 cottages to be rented full-time as rental rather than just be seasonal cottages but there is additional rights in the existing zoning to put in suites across the island and and we've seen very low uptake of permissions to build secondary suites in the last 10 years we've seen only 10 building permits for secondary suites and so there you know, a lack of uptake when it comes to accessory dwelling units. And we want to help people make the decision to build these units in order to have additional rental housing on the island. And the obstacles we've talked about before in various other meetings we've had here, which were, you know, people's bad experiences

with renters, obviously the cost issue and privacy issues and that kind of thing. How do you combat those kind of resistances in the community? Yeah, I mean, I think as a community that there needs to be recognition that, you know, that people who live here may not always be able to own their property here. And so making the decision to share your property with a renter is one that's going to support the community as a whole. But, you know, the reality is, the practicality is that, you know, people have different circumstances circumstances and it will be up to the individual set of circumstances that will kind of help them make that decision whether to invest the equity required

to build a unit for rent to a community member. And maybe they'll need the mortgage helper and that $40,000 is just the missing equity that they need to get the financing to build that suite. Or maybe somebody already owns their property without debt, but they're having trouble with property taxes and could use the extra income and wouldn't need to take out financing to build that suite.

So that $40,000 could help that person make the decision to bring some fresh energy on the property. Right. Now, we talked about tiny homes and other alternative kind of housing type of additional housing. And the bottom line is you need an occupancy permit, right? Yeah. So the CRD will be modeling its incentive program very closely to the provincial incentive program. And the key requirement is that there's an occupancy permit for the unit. In order to get the financial incentive, you need to get a building permit and have an occupancy permit under the BC Building Code or an engineer stamp that can get them an occupancy permit, then they would be eligible for the program. really needs to be updated to make provision for a tiny house on wheels and those sorts of alternative housing typologies

that it's harder to get building permits for those. But it's not impossible. We do know that some people do. So if you can get your occupancy permit, you can get your incentive. So is that a sort of chicken and egg thing though? Do you have to go and get the drawings approved, I guess, before you can actually access the money, right? In order to have your application for funding accepted, you will need to have a building permit issued by the Capital Regional District. Right, okay. So if people want to take advantage of this program, they should start

thinking about it and give me a call because you need to do the design work and get your application for building permit in. There's a lot of decisions that need to be made. Right. And of course, that costs money too, doesn't it? To get the drawings done and everything too. So you have to put some money in up front, I guess, yourself and hope that you're going to qualify for the... Yeah, I mean, the $40,000 isn't the thing that's going to flip the switch. If people weren't already considering putting in an additional unit and bringing the financials together to do that

and doing some thinking around what it would take, that's what would be required to take advantage of the program. Okay. Now, at one point, I think you mentioned the Galliano project, a non-profit where they'd got money under the Growing Communities Fund. Is that what it's called? Yeah. So this is a housing project on Galliano Island that the Southern Gulf Islands electoral area is supporting through purchasing of a housing project. It's called Tithikat Chaleum, which means forest homes in the Hul'q'uminum language.

And it's a 20-unit affordable rental housing project that's been through the zoning and has been readied for development by the non-profit society galley and so we've CRD has recently purchased this and we're seeking funding partnerships with senior government to develop the 20 units it'll be a 14 million dollar project and so we're looking for a lot of additional equity. And I think I talked about that to demonstrate the scale of costs that it takes to build non-profit projects with pre-development funding to help pay for infrastructure or qualified professional reporting that's needed to to kind of help that project along but also the the idea of supporting the secondary housing market like the suites and the cottages is is this idea that islanders can provide housing for other islanders and let's do as much as we can with what we've got now because zoning for multi-unit housing can take a long time.

Right and this is I think there was quite a lot of expression of frustration among some of the people at Ask Salt Spring today about dealing with governments and that kind of thing and I think the quote of the day was from that one gentleman who said that local government was more concerned with doing things right rather than doing the right thing which I know doesn't really apply to your project but we still have to do it right you know we're gonna be requiring occupancy permits, for example. Right, yeah, so that's doing it right. Yeah, and yet we're trying to do the right thing. Right, okay. So after the survey is done, what's the timeline then before something actually happens? Well, we've got the funding for the coordination through our partnership with the Southern Gulf Islands Tourism Partnership,

but we don't have the funding for the incentives themselves and the grants for the non-profit groups so that's a decision of the CRD board October 30th and how much are we looking for here um we are we're not um we don't have that a specific uh publicly announceable number at this point okay so we'll we'll see how much they are prepared to give us, right? Okay. So there's really no estimate as to how much this is going to take. We think it's a pilot program and it's going to be a very small impact. We don't think there's going to be enough money for a huge number of incentives, but it'll be enough to test the uptake because if we have you know just a handful of people make application for building permit and make application to

get the financial incentive and we have money left over then it's it shows that this program just isn't something isn't able to take advantage of the need in the community okay so do you have any kind of a target of how many you would like to see uptake how many uptakes you'd like to see on this i mean i think it would be great we've got five islands will be included in the program if we could get you know like four or five units incentives per island i i feel like that's uh that might sound very low but but like i said it's a specific set of circumstances and people have to be ready uh with a building permit to take advantage of the program so that we it's not going to be a

huge fire sale okay now assuming uh which is always dangerous, that the CRD board does approve some money for this, what's the timeline looking like after that? In January, we would launch the program. Okay. Okay, great. Well, thanks, Justine, for coming in. I really appreciate it. You've been listening to Ask Salt Spring Answered on Chia.fm, the voice of the Southern Gulf Islands. Thank you for having me.