The second phase of a regional housing action plan was unveiled at a meeting organized by Prairie Innovation Enterprise Region (PIER) in Humboldt on December 9.
Through its regional housing initiative, PIER's goal is to help communities create market-affordable housing for employees as the growth of industry in the area continues to bring new people to the region.
In its first phase, the development of a housing tool kit - or business plan - was established to help make communities ready for housing investment.
"In order to develop the tool kit, we worked with Schulte Industries in Englefeld, as a case study," PIER's CEO, Sylvia Waterer, explained at the meeting. "You can't really build a business plan or a model unless you actually have a sample so you can work through the kinks."
Now that the tool kit is in place, PIER is ready to move on to the second of three phases of their regional housing initiative. It has engaged a consulting firm from Regina to establish a financial management mechanism that can actually handle housing projects.
"The study team will give us a blueprint, or a business plan for this mechanism," said Waterer. "What we're doing on the side in PIER is securing funding that will give this mechanism life after we know what it's supposed to look like and after we have a business plan."
Waterer then turned the meeting over to Jessica Nixon, of consulting firm McNair Business Development. Nixon will act as project manager and coordinate the study and the consultants who will be involved with the project.
"We plan to get started next week," Nixon confirmed. "We'll start setting up our survey and questionnaires and identify the individuals who we are going to be contacting in order to gather the data that's needed for the housing needs and demand assessment."
Nixon explained that the consulting firm is working together with a second Regina company, Associated Engineering, which will be responsible for assessing the urban planning needs of the project. Together, she says they plan to have all the initial work done by the end of February, at which time they will have a Housing Needs and Demand Assessment ready.
Nixon then introduced Jennifer Blomme, an urban planner with Associated Engineering.
"First of all," Blomme said, "kudos to PIER for starting to prepare for what is coming and in taking such a structured approach to the anticipated growth in the region."
Blomme went on to explain how they would be developing and delivering two housing surveys to establish the assessment, one geared toward business and one geared toward municipalities.
"For the business survey, we will use the one that was developed in the housing tool kit as a starting point and template," said Blomme. "With that survey, we will look to identify some of the employee characteristics throughout the businesses, some of the housing needs that employees do have, as well as business support towards housing initiatives and incentives."
From the community survey, she said they hope to determine whether or not a community is ready to move forward and has the capacity for implementation for housing development.
According to the project structure handed out at the meeting, the final deliverable from the two consulting firms will be a housing mechanism business plan that will give PIER an implementation plan for the third phase in its regional housing initiative.
