By Steve Hubrecht
[email protected]
Invermere’s housing needs assessment is finally complete and, in results that will surprise few local renters, shows that the district is a one heckuva difficult place to find adequate and affordable rental housing.
All B.C. municipalities were required in 2018 to undertake local housing assessments before 2022, and Invermere was one of the first municipalities to get going on the initiative, starting work back in 2019. The completed assessment was presented to Invermere council at its Tuesday, March 23 meeting and generated considerable discussion.
One of the major points hammered home in the report is Invermere’s comparatively large proportion of non-full time resident homeowners: There are 2,032 dwellings in Invermere and just 68 per cent of those, (1,375), are inhabited by full-time residents. The remaining 32 per cent (roughly 650 dwellings) are not used on a permanent basis, with the report noting that most of these are used as vacation homes (either personal or as vacation rentals).
The report outlined that there are 125 to 140 households (45 homeowner households and 80 to 90 renting households) in Invermere with a “core need” for housing, which means they are households consisting of families or individuals who are living in unsuitable housing (houses in very poor condition, needing major repairs, with safety issues, or with ‘overcrowding’ – i.e. far too few rooms for the number of people in the family) and who have no recourse for other housing because they cannot afford any other option. Most “core need” households in Invermere are one or two-person households.
“Providing housing for each of these households means potentially adding another 95-plus affordable housing units beyond the soon to be developed Farmhouse project units,” notes the report.
“Core needs” covers just the most dire of Invermere’s housing problems. However, as the report outlines further “housing affordability” issues. “Rental or smaller sized ownership units are difficult for many to afford,” read the report. “There are about 350 households in Invermere with incomes below $42,000 (a few thousand less than the median income) and (they) are unable to afford the median monthly rental shelter cost of $1,049.”
These 350 households are not just a small sliver of the Invermere population, and in fact, account for more than 25 per cent of all households in the district.
Another point emphasized in the report is that the disparity becomes incomes and home prices means that single parents earning average salaries simply can’t afford homeownership, even if that home is a condominium or apartment (and sometimes can barely manage rent). As the report put it: “units larger than one-bedroom are a stretch for those households with a median income and below, especially lone parents and one-person households…Lone parent and one-person households earning the median income cannot afford home ownership prices for the appropriate dwelling size.”
A few of the 350 households making $42,000 or less can make by finding homes to rent (or buy) that have rents (or mortgages) substantially lower than average. But as the report — and Invermere councillors — noted, such options are few and far between, leaving many low or median income earners little choice but to scramble and try to pay rents and mortgages they can’t really afford. The report found 275 Invermere households spending more than 30 per cent of their before-tax income on shelter costs. This includes 155 of 390 renter households (nearly 40 per cent of Invermere’s renter households) and 120 out of 985 homeowners households (12 per cent of Invermere’s homeowner households).
In addition, the report highlights that up to 500 households (almost 40 per cent of all Invermere households) are without the income to support the average strata-based one-bedroom residential dwelling ownership costs of $1,236 a month (strata-based one-bedroom residential dwellings represent the most affordable type of homeownership available in Invermere). Both these figures are above the average for the Regional District of East Kootenay (RDEK).
Not all households with housing affordability issues are in desperate need of other, more affordable shelter options, but could easily slip into that category with the loss of a job, an injury or illness, or other unforeseen circumstances, and the 275 figure, according to the report, does “highlight the need for more affordable options in the community.”
Some of the 275 household spending more than 30 per cent of their income on housing, however, are indeed in urgent need of other options: of the 155 renting households with housing affordability issues, about 10 per cent are in severe affordability need (defined as spending between 50 per cent and 100 per cent of income on housing and not able to find other housing). Of the 120 home-owning households with affordability issues, 25 are in severe need (spending between 50 per cent and 100 per cent of their income on housing), and 20 likely need housing that is significantly below market rates.
Seniors’ housing is also an issue, with most seniors’ living facilities in Invermere having constant wait lists of 30 or more people, according to the report.
The report also underscored the proportional preponderance of single family detached dwellings in Invermere, which make up 70 per cent of the district’s dwellings, a rate that is far above the provincial average for B.C. communities, which is 44 per cent.
A lack of housing options for seasonal or even full time workers has long been a topic cited by both small business entrepreneurs and large-scale tourism operators as a major hurdle in finding and keeping employees, and the report addressed this point, noting that “as there is very little purpose built rental in Invermere… lack of rental housing is most critical during the summer months when seasonal employees in Invermere need to find accommodation and (when) many rental units are turned into short term rental units, or when second home owners want to use their homes.”
The report identified several gaps in the district’s housing development policies, including that zoning hasn’t supported duplexes yet; that big chunks of private property exist, but there is no desire to develop; that there are substantial infrastructure services issues, including that much infrastructure is getting old, especially in core downtown infill areas; and that it is difficult to infill existing buildings in areas such as the downtown, since most buildings are old and essentially need to be torn down.
During discussion on the assessment at the council meeting, Invermere planner Rory Hromadnik explained that the report draws on information from the 2016 federal census, as so is a little bit dated. Several councillor opined that this means the situation may, in fact, be more urgent than detailed in the report, given that Invermere has seen an influx of residents moving here from larger urban centres, and has seen house prices shoot up dramatically since the COVID-19 pandemic began more than a year ago, and that the number of short-term vacation rentals here continues to increase.
Hromadnik said that even using the 2016 census data, the assessment clearly shows “we’ve got significant needs at this time.” He pointed to the high proportion of single family dwellings in Invermere (70 per cent versus the 44 per cent average across B.C. communities), saying “people like their detached dwelling and their piece of grass in Invermere. It’s a little more expensive to live here and that’s probably one of the reasons why, is that we like our space.
“So what that does, is it leads to larger dwellings…we have a disproportionate number of three bedroom homes, and less rentals and smaller or single bedroom homes than the average within the RDEK and provincially. What we see is a shortfall in the supply of rentals, a shortfall in the supply of core needs for single (parent) families,” he continued.
Hromadnik noted that projecting the trends outlined in the report into the future shows “additional needs” in both the ‘core needs’ and ‘housing affordability’ categories.
The homes many people in these categories are currently living in are just not an appropriate size, but the cost (rent or mortgage) for something larger is too great, explained Hromadnik. “And they just can’t get out of that situation. There’s no availability.”
He estimated the waitlist at most seniors’ living facilities, which the report had pegged at 30-plus people, as being more like 40 to 50 people.
“There is a significant task ahead of us,” said Hromadnik. “By the look of things and the way the real estate market is right now and what’s available, what you see on Facebook and advertised, there’s just not a lot of availability. It’s pretty tough sledding out there.”
He outlined that the district plans to consult with the Invermere Housing Task Force, and then create some draft proposal recommendations for policy and bylaw consideration, present these at a workshop-type event and “start to see if we can tangibly start to tackle some of this.”
Hromadnik said there had been some positive initiatives in affordable housing recently, such as the Farmhouse project, “but we’ve got a ways to go” both in terms of overall housing stock and in terms of rental stock.
Rental stock is many ways more pressing than overall housing stock, he added, saying that “with the price of homes and the way they’re selling, a lot of what were perceived as longer-term rentals are no longer long-term rentals. They’re being sold. It’s putting a pretty significant dent in it (Invermere’s rental housing stock).”
“A lot of things have shifted or changed very quickly in the last three or four months. There’s been a real change in terms of evictions for long term tenants, with (the) houses (they previously rented long term) being sold,” said Invermere councillor Gerry Taft, who is also a realtor. “There’s a lot of stuff that’s moving and changing and it’s quite dynamic. So it may be necessary to revisit sections of the report.”
Taft added he also feels that increasing rental housing is more pressing in the near-term than making single family homeownership more attainable.
“We know there is a need…I think rentals should be on the top of the list,” said councillor Ute Juras, adding she knows of people losing their rentals because the landlord has decided to sell, and the homes have sold incredibly quickly. “People are freaking out…they don’t have time to find something else, and even if they did have time, availability is really limited…It’s a dire situation right now.”
Invermere mayor Al Miller suggested that the current landlord-tenant act may play a role in the lack of available rental housing in Invermere, opining that many homeowners view the act as being skewed so heavily in favour of tenants that they hesitate to become landlords.
