As more progress is being made in the recovery of the community the RMWB is going to be sharpening the focus of the weekly recovery engagement sessions being held throughout the region.
The meeting planned for Thursday, August 25 from 4-8 at the Thickwood YMCA will be the final broad-focused meeting offering an informal atmosphere for residents to ask questions of the committee members, recovery staff, and agency partners on hand for the sessions.
The Red Cross, Alberta Health Services, Insurance Bureau of Canada and other agency partners will continue to attend the sessions and drop-ins will still be welcome so that people looking to ask a quick question about overall recovery or their own unique situation will be able to do so.
But Wood Buffalo Recovery Committee member and chair of the community engagement sub-committee, Kim Jenkins, said at Wednesday’s WBRC meeting the sessions would gain some much-needed and much-requested focus in the coming weeks.
“The week following and the weeks after that these sessions will be targeted. So, for example, on September the 8th the general engagement session will be around interim housing and there will be a breakout session on Waterways and then the following Thursday there’ll be two or three other topics that people can come and, instead of speaking to a whole group generally, we’re going to start speaking to selected topics or issues specifically at each one of these,” said Jenkins.
The aim is to have face-to-face interactions which will not only provide information to the residents but will also allow the RMWB to gain feedback from those residents about what changes they need to see, what information they are lacking, and what more needs to be done to address their specific needs.
The Waterways meeting would focus on gathering the feedback of residents on rebuilding and recovery and would aim to understand what they want to see in terms of the future of their own community.
The RMWB is still waiting for approval to rebuild in the community which would require approval of flood mitigation plans. Mayor Melissa Blake wrote to the province asking for that approval last week and MyMcMurray received a copy of that letter: Minister Phillips – Demountable Flood Wall.
Role in long-term planning
An essential part of the community engagement plan includes involving the community in the development of the long-term recovery plan for the community which means gathering their feedback throughout the entire process, beginning with the broad-focused recovery sessions and moving through to the more targeted sessions.
“That’s a really important transition,” said interim Recovery Team lead Dana Woodworth of the move from broad- to sharp-focused sessions. “It allows long-term planning to actually start. Until now it’s, to be quite frank, there’s been a bit of a tyranny of the moment. The team has been trying very hard to get in front of recovery and that’s hard to do because there’s so much to coordinate, so much to do and competing for a limited amount of time.
“But the start of the focused groups, the start of an organized and very strategic stakeholder engagement strategy will allow long-term planners to be there to listen and to actually place your community months and, ideally perhaps, years ahead in terms of the planning and the thinking that’s required to recover your community,” said Woodworth.
He said while the Task Force will continue to push for resolutions on the items immediately facing the community like the Green Homes Plan for Abasand and Beacon Hill and the plan for transitional housing there will be more happening in the background that will be a little less obvious to the public that will be focused on the long-term recovery of the community.
Transitional housing update
Before a targeted session on interim housing can be held the RMWB has to announce its plan for transitional housing for those displaced by the fire and the order against re-occupation from the Chief Medical Officer of Health.
Erin O’Neill, Recovery Branch Lead, said the plan is being finalized and will be announced by the end of August along with an application process for the residents who will be needing a place to stay.
The RMWB has requested modular units be brought into Fort McMurray as soon as possible to accommodate the need for pet-friendly, three-or-more-bedroom accommodations for the families affected by the wildfire. The municipality is working to figure out exactly what is needed for accommodations.
A survey was conducted by the Red Cross on behalf of the RMWB and the Government of Alberta and O’Neill said calls were made to a sample of residents whose homes were destroyed or damaged beyond habitation.
She said the results of the anonymous survey will help inform the decisions the municipality makes to address housing needs for those residents while construction is under way and said the results would be shared publicly at the same time the plans are released for housing options.
“The survey results indicate that a significant number of residents have secured interim housing already, however not all residents have found housing,” said O’Neill. “The survey results also indicate there is a need for three bedroom housing in addition to one- and two-bedroom houses.”
The RMWB is working with the province to meet the needs of all residents displaced by the fire according to their own individual circumstances.
“For one- and two-bedrooms, the reported vacancy from property management companies, hotels, and housing associations suggests the demand can be met through the market,” said O’Neill. “That being said there may be other barriers preventing residents from securing housing such as pet-friendly accommodations, and/or affordability.”
You can find a list of the current available accommodation options online here and you’re encouraged to connect with the Red Cross for assistance if affordability is a barrier.
The modular homes that are being brought up by the province have been used in previous disaster response and are being cleaned, repaired where necessary, and painted. They will not be provided for free, but will be charged at either the market rate or at rent geared to income depending on the applicant’s circumstances.
O’Neill said the RMWB is also considering encouraging homeowners who have put their homes up for sale or who are considering doing so to instead become landlords and rent their homes to the families who need a place to stay while their homes are rebuilt. This may go the furthest to meeting the needs of the people displaced by the fire who require pet-friendly accommodations and a lifestyle similar to what they would have had in their own home.
Also a possibility is a matching program to link people with space for rent to families looking for a place to stay, but that will come into the foreground after the Green Homes Plan is approved for Abasand and Beacon Hill because there will be an adjustment in what’s available when people are allowed to return to their standing homes.
When the full housing plan is finalized it will be made public.
Listen to O’Neill’s full presentation here:
erino'niell
