August 16, 2024: Nineteen, and one very well-behaved pup, joined us for all or part of our ASK Salt Spring housing conversation with Southern Gulf Islands CRD Manager – and former Salt Spring Islands Trust Planner – Justine Starke. After our Territorial Acknowledgement, we began our conversation with our traditional question, asking Justine what “excites and delights” her. 

Recognizing that there were so many things that give her pleasure, she spoke briefly about her commitment to diversity, both in our community as well as in our environment. While housing concerns have been a large part of her focus as the CRD Manager for the Southern Gulf Islands, (Mayne, Galiano, Saturna, and the two Pender Islands), she also derives much pleasure encouraging systems to support the diversity and strength of our islands. Among those systems are better internet so that folks can connect easily while remaining in their island homes. She also mentioned her efforts to establish a transit system for the Southern Gulf Islands (envisioned to also include a water connection to Salt Spring), so that islanders can function as a connected archipelago sharing resources and services among all the islands. 

 Justine began by telling us that the new CRD Rural Housing Program she has been instrumental in establishing will not solve all of our very complex and expensive housing challenges. It is a small pilot program designed to address the unique challenges of building affordable housing on our rural islands. It will not, in the foreseeable future, have the tens of millions of dollars needed to fully-fund proposed affordable housing initiatives on the Southern Gulf Islands and Salt Spring.

What is the proposed CRD Rural Housing Program?

• The CRD Rural Housing Program, a pilot program for Salt Spring and the Southern Gulf Islands, is subject to the CRD Board approving 2025 funding this fall.
• Staff coordination of the Rural Housing Program is being funded ($100 000 in 2024) by the Southern Gulf Islands Tourism Partnership (SGITP), using a portion of the revenue from the MRDT (https://www.destinationbc.ca/what-we-do/funding-sources/mrdt/), a tax collected by accommodation providers.
• A website has just been launched: https://getinvolved.crd.bc.ca/crd-rural-housing-program). By going to this site, you can not only read a number of relevant reports but also subscribe so that you will be notified of breaking news and participate in surveys. 

This new Rural Housing Program got its impetus from the efforts of the Southern Gulf Islands Economic Sustainability Commission’s Southern Gulf Islands Housing Strategy (https://www.crd.bc.ca/docs/default-source/crd-document-library/plans-reports/housing/southern-gulf-islands-housing-strategy.pdf), presented to the CRD Board in spring 2022. Although there were 22 recommendations in this report, a major recommendation was the development of a housing program within CRD that addresses the significantly different housing challenges faced by our rural islands, including complicated Islands Trust zoning regulations and processes, higher building costs, and difficulty competing successfully for funding when compared to the larger urban housing projects. 

 If funded by the CRD Board, this pilot program is expected to have three major areas of focus. It will: 

1. Create of a rural housing resource, led by the already-funded coordinator, that can partner effectively with housing funders (especially provincial and federal) to further Southern Gulf Islands and Salt Spring initiatives. 
2. Establish a fund to provide loans to homeowners to build or renovate cottages/suites (technically called accessory dwelling units -ADUs) if they provide affordable rental accommodation for five years. 
3. Offer predevelopment funding (pdf) to nonprofits for the work needed to submit competitive funding proposals. This pdf funding could include support for multiple and expensive studies, infrastructure and site preparation, and engineered designs.

 Cottages and Suites: We began our conversation with more detail about the financial incentives available for homeowners wishing build or renovate cottages/suites to rent to locals in need of housing. Currently, the province offers a secondary suite incentive program:(https://www.bchousing.org/housing-assistance/secondary-suite). Designed to help homeowners to create affordable housing in their communities, it will offer a loan of up to 50% of the cost of the renovation/construction of a suite or cottage up to $40,000. This loan will be forgiven if the homeowner rents this space for five years at pre-determined affordable housing rates which are, for a $70,000 annual income, $1,400 per month for a 1-bedroom and $1,760 for a 2 bedroom. (It was noted that, for Salt Spring, these rental rates may be close to market rates.) 

Unfortunately, given island building estimates of $440/sq ft and even renovation estimates of $296/sq ft, recent studies indicate that this $40,000 incentive might simply not be enough for most islanders to create needed rentals. It is Justine’s hope that this provincial (and, possibly, federal) funding can be stacked with CRD Regional Housing funding to offer an incentive that could potentially be double the current $40,000.

While it is easy to blame zoning regulations for our scarce affordable housing rentals, Justine believes that the high cost of building and renovating on our islands is a major impediment to new rentals. She cited the minimal uptake of a 2013 Salt Spring Islands Trust bylaw that legalized secondary suites in many neighbourhoods and the 2020 bylaw which legalized over 400 full-time rental cottages. These two bylaws have only resulted in 10 building permits issued for these now legal rentals.

Justine is hopeful that financial incentives will positively tip the financial balance so that homeowners will decide to offer extra space on their properties for rental accommodations, especially benefiting workers. To be eligible for these incentives, properties will need to have zoning in place.

While the details of this provincial program have been established, Justine understands that adaptations to the proposed CRD Rural Housing Program incentives may be needed to better address the needs of island homeowners. Such adaptations may include incentives for homeowners renting to family members.

An initial focus of the Rural Housing Program will be to inform residents about the incentive program(s). Surveys and community engagement will seek input for this proposed local incentive program. As a first step, Justine suggested that interested homeowners consider if they want to build an accessory unit for rental to a community member, contact the Islands Trust to ensure that their zoning will allow a cottage/suite, and consider the financial and practical feasibility of renting on their property.

Our conversation shifted to what kind of suites/cottages would qualify for this incentive: 

• What about using the cottage incentive to prepare the land and infrastructure for tiny homes? An admittedly interesting question, Justine’s response was that, as long as the resulting tiny home(s) can get a building permit under the BC Building Code and Occupancy Permit from CRD, they would be eligible for the incentive.
• What about container homes? While used containers seem to be suspect to Building Inspectors as their past use is unknown, the answer is the same: As long as a building permit is issued they would be eligible for the incentive.
• What about modular homes? Again, as long as a CRD building permit it awarded, it is likely possible.

Even though the focus of this part of our conversation was about making it easier financially for homeowners to rent, it was also recognized that other factors also make renting challenging, such as homeowner fears of having a difficult tenant as well as resource issues like water and septic concerns.

Support for Nonprofits with a Multi-Unit Project: Although still being established, it is expected that a third focus of our new Rural Housing Program will be support for nonprofit multi-unit affordable housing projects. While this support is unlikely to be enough to provide major capital funding for project development, Justine is hopeful that projects ready to proceed may be given predevelopment funding (pdf) to cover some of the expenses needed to qualify to seek construction funding. Funding could support expenses for required studies, site preparation, infrastructure, and/or engineered designs. 

Justine was asked whether creative housing options, like cooperative ownership; shared housing; and use of publicly-owned land, like Crown land, would qualify for support. She responded that.all forms of tenure would be eligible, as the program will seek to offset costs to develop affordable housing, whatever the ownership model.

Throughout our time together, some participants expressed the opinion that blame for our continuing struggle to provide worker housing falls squarely on our local government. The Islands Trust, CRD, and CRD’s Building Inspection were all singled out for getting in the way of those who could actually build the housing we need. One of the quotes of the day was that our local elected officials are so caught up in process that output lags: “They continue focusing on doing things right rather than doing the right thing.”

While Justine, a former Islands Trust Planner as well as a CRD Manager, totally understand the criticisms, she continued to reminded us that funding is the biggest impediment to success. She noted that the Islands Trust zoning for affordable housing exists on many properties, and are stalled out for a variety of reasons – cost being the main one.

Agreeing that provincially-mandated building codes can be an impediment to progress, Justine expressed her conviction that these rental accommodations must be safe, adhering to current provincial building practices. She did, however, agree that some prohibitions, like those for tiny homes, may seem unreasonable. She told us that conversations about these building prohibitions are taking place with the province. While she is hopeful that rental housing solutions, like tiny homes, will soon be far easier to build, her task nurturing the new CRD Rural Housing Program is to find solutions within current regulations. 

Concerning the fact that our local CRD does not simply build the multi-family housing we need, Justine reminded us that these projects cost millions and millions of dollars. On. Salt Spring, there are properties, like the Kings Lane project (https://gulfislandsdriftwood.com/kings-lane-housing-concept-gets-early-support/), that have the land, much of the infrastructure, and zoning in place, but still need predevelopment funding before even applying for the millions needed for construction. Justine hopes that a project like Kings Lane will be able to access Rural Housing Program predevelopment funding as well as receiving help from the housing coordinator to address challenges.

When Justine was asked about a quantitative analysis of our housing needs, we learned that a now-outdated 2022 analysis revealed that Salt Spring needed 300 housing units immediately and another 300 in the next three years – or now. This year, the Islands Trust is updating the Housing Needs Assessments across the Islands Trust Area, and the CRD Rural Housing Program may be able to partner with Islands Trust to bring additional, qualitative data to our understanding of the complexity of needs.

While there is common acceptance that public funding for affordable housing should go to nonprofits, rather than private developers, there were a few participants at this gathering who stated that privately-built housing should also be supported with public funds. They believed that if private builders received some public money (and the government got out of the way,) our housing crisis could be easily solved. 

The example of Channel Ridge was offered. We were told that infrastructure is in place, ready for North Salt Spring Waterworks District to provide water, potentially netting hundreds of thousands of dollars in ratepayer income were Channel Ridge developed. And, if zoning allowed 100 more densities (in addition to the 400 already allocated), this participant suggested that we could have 100 new affordable housing units at no cost to taxpayers. While all would not agree with these assertions, there appeared to be general agreement that further discussion could be warranted.

As our time together drew to a close, Justine reminded us that our new CRD Rural Housing Program is in its infancy, with approval in concept by the CRD Board and $100,000 committed by the Southern Gulf Islands Tourism partnership for a coordinator, but, to date, no CRD 2025 funding commitment. Stay tuned for this expected funding allocation this fall – and subscribe to this exiting new program so that you can complete surveys and keep up with breaking news: https://getinvolved.crd.bc.ca/crd-rural-housing-program).

With deep appreciation for Justine’s vision, hard work making that vision a reality, deep understanding of housing issues, and an infectious enthusiasm, we thanked her, hoping she will be our special guest again soon. (Thanks, Justine!)