The city’s housing strategy was the focus of a public open house held at North Battleford Public Library on Thursday.
It was the Housing Strategy Public Input Open House, put on by city of North Battleford. There was a session scheduled specifically for stakeholders at 2 p.m., and another at 6 p.m. aimed more at the general public.
The city is currently in the middle of research pertaining to the North Battleford Housing Strategy. Much of the research has already been done, with the city’s Housing Study completed in 2015.
What was still missing, according to Alan Wallace, who is the planning lead for consulting firm V3, is the strategy. The goal of this session was to get feedback on what policies and strategies should be pursued to address the issues found in that 2015 study as part of a 10-year Housing Strategy and Action Plan.
“It’s a continuation of what work had been done in 2015 in North Battleford,” Wallace said in speaking to the News-Optimist.
“The next step is what do we do about it. So it’s a strategy and a defined action plan which we find in the community and continue to find in 2017.”
This project is being undertaken by the City of North Battleford, with V3 hired on by the city as the consultant. In turn, V3 has subcontracted Praxis Research to help with the survey of the public.
In addition to the public open houses, an online survey has been conducted. There have been 187 responses, which is considered an excellent response rate, and the hope was that the number would reach 200 by the time it closed on Nov. 6. The survey can be found on the city’s website.
Some findings from the online survey were already presented. Among those was feedback on what type of housing projects should receive incentives. The most support was for incentives for affordable rental, followed by entry-level housing.
There was wide support for policy changes to make more housing available, for North Battleford to take a greater leadership role in housing, and for other organizations to take a greater role. As well, the majority of respondents also believed there was not enough information and research on housing issues already.
What stood out for Wallace is that the survey is yielding definitive results.
“We’re getting very strong results. In other words, there’s not too many 50-50 splits. We’re getting 80-20 splits.”
The public input meetings on Thursday sought feedback on what actions could have the greatest impact and which of them could be taken, what financial incentives should be considered and which one would be the best one for positive change, what additional actions were needed to facilitate community support, the best ideas on how to monitor and research housing issues, and to find out the best ways the public and stakeholders could be engaged through education and awareness.
“What we want to do is focus on the pressing needs,” Wallace said. “What we’ve learned is that North Battleford doesn’t necessarily have a housing supply issue; it doesn’t necessarily have a housing affordability issue. The issue seems to be centred on specifics such as the diversity of housing and the range of choices.”
He explained most of the choices are between single-family or multi-family only, with not enough of a range in between.
The other needs, he said, are for seniors housing and also student housing.
“So we’re trying to increase the range of choices,” Wallace said.
The consultants’ plan for 2017 is to finish the Housing Strategy and Action Plan, which would be presented to council likely early next year. At that time they intend to deliver “a specific set of strategies and action items” for the city to address the issue.
Afterwards, the focus starting in 2018 would be on the implementation.
