The Wood Buffalo Housing and Development Corporation is still in good financial shape.
It told council this week that it’s running a 2.6 million dollar surplus, and only raised rent by an average of 1.17 percent.
President Bryan Lutes told council they’re making a far-reaching impact.
“Overall we contribute to the quality of life for over three-thousand citizens in the RMWB in this past year. Looking back to our inception probably, 15-20-thousand people.”
But it also has no plans to build new units this year or next year, because there’s nowhere to build yet.
“The base is that we do not have a piece of dirt to build on. In Parsons, we have been in communications with the province, and they have indicated that we have a fairly significant affordable housing play in there, that could potentially double our portfolio over the next 8-10 years.”
Lutes told council this week that their challenge is addressing the huge number of people who don’t qualify for social housing, but still can’t afford market prices.
“In most communities this gap that we see is around 7-percent, in this community we fully believe that its 15-percent or more that need assistance in this gap, so our gap is substantially greater than other communities.”
November 29th, 2012
