This letter was sent to Pemberton’s mayor and council, and shared with Pique.
The rental housing shortage is worsening monthly and local businesses continue to suffer from a lack of staff. The housing crisis and worker shortage are intertwined. We as a community need to act on immediate solutions. I respectfully suggest the mayor and council of the Village of Pemberton look to the town of Terrace, B.C. and its Bluegrass Meadows micro village.
A quick descriptor from its website (bluegrassmeadows.com): “We currently have 33 rented cabins/tiny homes, soon to be 45, and six tiny home sites with four more under construction, a common building with laundry, a recycling/compost and waste program… and we are excited to have built a community garden in the spring of 2019. The village is surrounded by hiking trails, fishing holes and several lakes. And, we feel so grateful to have a diverse group of tenants who share their unique gifts and skills with the community.
“In 2015, Terrace, B.C. was facing a rental crisis with zero occupancy. Residents of Terrace were looking for more home rental options as well as attainable home ownership. From this feedback, we developed Canada’s first micro community on 31 private acres of beautiful, wild land skirting the Kalum River.”
Frankly, this is exactly the kind of forward thinking the Village of Pemberton should be engaging in. Instead of accepting the lack of rental housing as an inevitability of life in the Sea to Sky, and again insisting short-term rentals are not affecting our rental stock; what a change it would be for mayor and council to act decisively and make progressive decisions to improve the lives of those who elected them.
Tania Chiasson // Pemberton
