NIPAWIN — The Town of Nipawin will research on how housing incentive policies are applied in other communities, which could influence Nipawin’s own policy.
The housing incentive policy in Nipawin currently allows residents to apply for a four year tax incentive on new single family or duplex residential houses constructed on properties with an existing house that will be demolished.
The research Nipawin will be conducting will focus how other municipalities’ policies function and what specific incentives they give.
“What we’re going to look at is how are other municipalities dealing with the tax incentives on those,” said Barry Elliott, Nipawin’s town administrator. “Is four years too much? We don’t know that yet – we have to do the research.”
The aim of the tax incentive is to encourage more residential development and rehabilitation.
“Ultimately we want more investment in residential in the community,” Elliott said. “That’s what this is intended for.”
The decision to further research housing incentive policies cames after Nipawin council voted on Feb. 25 to make a small update to its own policy.
“It’s really an update to our language from our previous policy, just making sure it’s clean and current,” Elliott said.
According to Elliott, this new research may cause more edits to the policy itself.
“What it could mean is another revision of the policy, but that’s easy enough to do.”
