By Sebastian Kanally

The first phase of a new housing needs assessment shows among the data that 15 per cent of all households in Oliver are facing affordability challenges. 

Lorraine Copas, executive director of Sparc BC presented a summary of a housing needs assessment for Oliver at their July 15 council meeting. This data will serve as a springboard to recommendations and a final report later.  

Oliver accounts for six per cent of the regional population with 5,094 people. A total of 166 people were added to the town’s population between 2016 and 2021, representing a rate of growth of 3.4 per cent. 

Oliver is home to 2,310 households, which grew by 155 households between 2016 and 2021, which is a 7.2 per cent rate of growth. This rate of growth is just slightly below the regional growth rate of 8.8 per cent growth. 

Of these homes in Oliver, 1,795 people own their homes and 510 are rental households. Of these 400 are market rental units and 102 non-market units. There are 102 social housing units, with 75 being family units and 27 seniors’ units. 

Not just the housing stock, but housing affordability has been a hot topic at Oliver council. Councillor Terry Schafer said in the meeting that “this council is all over trying to create affordable housing, and more of a housing stock in general.”

Schafer said further that anything that Copas, and director of development services Randy Houle could come up with together to address this issue in the town “would be great”.

The median household income in the area is $71,000. Affordable housing is defined nationally as spending 30 per cent of income on housing, which works out to $1,775 per month for a house with the median income.

The statistics from 2021 in this report note that the average housing costs for owners in Oliver were $840 per month, and the average cost for renters was $900 per month. 

These numbers can be somewhat misleading as it includes all households, including those paid off. Interest rates were also around 2.5 per cent in 2021, in contrast to 6.95 per cent now, which would impact some of these numbers. 

The report notes that at the time of the 2021 census, there were 340 households in Oliver who were facing affordability challenges, that is spending more than 30 per cent of their income on housing. Those 340 households represent 15 per cent of all households. Region wide the percentage is 17.8. 

Now that the preliminary data has been gathered, Copas noted that some of the next steps are the further development of baseline data, formalizing policy directions and actions, and conducting outreach and engagement with the community including its partners and citizens.

After this has been done another report will be brought back to council with a proposed plan and strategic directions to meet identified housing needs. 

Copas’ report explained some levers that local governments can have in their toolkit for tackling affordable housing such as having regulatory and zoning powers when it comes to density and facilitating new supply in housing through waiving and reducing fees and requirements for developers such as parking. 

This last recommendation may be hard to pass in Oliver as the recent Provincial Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing (SSMUH) legislation was held up for precisely council not being on board with the reduction in mandatory parking. 

Copas also suggested the town can leverage partnerships and relationships, make land available through different types of grants to incentivize development and pursue innovation in zoning, rental only zoning, and mixed income/mixed tenure housing. 

Council was happy to see the housing report and expressed excitement for any recommendations on direction that may come as a result. 

Councillor Petra Veintimilla noted that it was good to see this again, as the last housing needs assessment was conducted in 2020 and because of the pandemic it was almost immediately “out of date”. 

Councillor David Mattes explained that the questions of what Oliver has and what Oliver needs are vital to future decision making.

“I really look forward to what you come back with as to what our future direction is. We are constantly asked to approve this project or that project, but we don’t really know whether those projects fit in terms of the need for the town, and what the town’s requirements are.”