IN THE NEWS: Lumby Approves Affordable Housing Plan
The Village of Lumby is a community of about 1,800 in the North Okanagan region of British Columbia. In recent years, there has been strong demand and a limited number of homes available to rent or purchase, and real estate prices have been rising at a steady rate. In 2017, the Village of Lumby engaged CitySpaces to prepare an Affordable Housing Strategy for the community. The Affordable Housing Strategy is intended to provide a better understanding of local housing issues and formulate strategies for addressing these affordable housing challenges.
The Affordable Housing Strategy was developed in three phases. An initial phase involved the creation of a Housing Needs and Gaps Report to provide a baseline understanding of housing need and demand in the Village of Lumby. This assessment involved assembling and analyzing relevant and reliable data, as well as conducting a series of one-on-one interviews with community stakeholders. Following analysis of this data, this first stage of the Affordable Housing Strategy process led to the creation of a report that identified key housing gaps in the community and priority groups experiencing significant challenges finding affordable and suitable housing. Specifically, the analysis found that low-income, single-person, and lone-parent households are challenged with housing affordability, and there was evidence that many young adults, young families, and seniors were also facing considerable affordability challenges.
The second stage of the development of the Affordable Housing Strategy involved on the ground community consultation, in which findings from the Housing Needs and Gaps Report were shared with the community. Members of the public were invited to a community Open House and a focus group was convened with community stakeholders to seek feedback from the community about the identified housing needs and gaps, as well as to get input on community preferences regarding possible housing actions and priorities.
Feedback from the community was used to inform the third phase of the development of the Affordable Housing Strategy, in which specific strategic actions that respond to the unique housing needs of Lumby were identified, as well as a set of specific actions and timeline for implementation. Lumby’s Affordable Housing Strategy will provide the community with a roadmap of short-term and long-term actions that can be implemented to respond to the community’s unique housing needs.
PROJECT TEAM:
Jim Beaudreau Linda Allen