Kelowna city council expressed concerns around BC Housing's Middle Income Housing Partnership plan, which proposes leasing city-owned land to developers at a low price in order to create more affordable homes for middle-income residents.<\/p>\n
Concerns were expressed by council at the small percentage of affordable housing that will be produced by the plan. The draft plan proposes that 20% of the developed homes will be sold at 20% below current market rates.<\/p>\n
Councillor Loyal Wooldridge called this ratio a “very scant number in regards to the need within the community.”<\/p>\n
Mayor Tom Dyas appeared more optimistic.<\/p>\n
“The benchmark is set around 20%. The hope is that it… gets to 25% or 30% depending upon where all those numbers come into play,” Dyas said.<\/p>\n
However, the city needs a tenfold increase in affordable housing if it's to meet the current demand and, while the new plan will create more affordable housing for the middle-class, lower-income residents will not benefit.<\/p>\n
READ MORE:<\/strong> Kelowna plans to hand over city land in exchange for affordable housing<\/a><\/p>\n Homes created under the new plan will cater towards residents earning between $42,000 and $87,000, who are struggling to keep up with the expensive rental market.<\/p>\n The current average monthly rent for a two-bedroom rental in Kelowna is $1,805.<\/p>\n With the proposed 20% reduction, rent on the new homes would come in at around $1,444 a month.<\/p>\n READ MORE: <\/strong>Kamloops, Kelowna buck national rental vacancy increase trend<\/a><\/p>\n Councillor Ron Cannon pointed out that the newly proposed reductions may still be unattainable for the $42,000 salary bracket that are said to benefit.<\/p>\n Ben Walker, the city's real estate services manager, acknowledged the limited impact the plan will have on low-income residents.<\/p>\n “It is not a silver bullet solution to the shortage and it will not solve the housing challenges faced by low and very low-income households,” he said.<\/p>\n To contact a reporter for this story, email Georgina Whitehouse<\/a> or call 250-864-7494 or email the editor<\/a>. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom<\/a> and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kelowna city council expressed concerns around BC Housing's Middle Income Housing Partnership plan, which proposes leasing city-owned land to developers at a low price in order to create more affordable homes for middle-income residents. Concerns were expressed by council at the small percentage of affordable housing that will be produced by the plan. The draft […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":545,"featured_media":1116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"guid":"","source":"iNFOnews","byline":"Georgina Whitehouse","published":"2024-02-05T08:56:07","updated":"2024-02-05T16:56:07","_infotelid":"IT103056","_prepressid":"103056","_multisite_post_sync":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[540,2,541,543],"tags":[345,385,47,16,396],"region":[322,323,324,325],"class_list":["post-1117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-highlight","category-inhome","category-local","category-topnews","tag-city-of-kelowna-2024","tag-georgina-whitehouse","tag-housing-crisis","tag-kelowna-news","tag-klfeb2024","region-kamloops","region-kelowna","region-penticton","region-vernon"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/MediaItemID99542-8580.jpeg","post_modified":"2024-02-05T16:56:07","post_modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T00:56:07","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/545"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1117"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6202,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions\/6202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1117"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.infonews.ca\/inhome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=1117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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