Kelowna among a dozen B.C. cities calling for easy access to new federal housing fund

A new federal housing fund announced in the budget earlier this month is being welcomed by B.C. municipalities hoping the monies are easily accessible.

A new federal housing fund announced in the federal budget earlier this month has been welcomed by B.C. municipalities hoping the monies are easily accessible.

“This is a new fund and happy to see it, but we want to make sure that it’s not held up and that it’s easily accessible to municipalities to be able to put it to good use to get housing,” Kelowna mayor Colin Basran told Global News Saturday morning.

A statement has been  issued by the B.C. Urban Mayors Caucus regarding the $4 billion Housing Accelerator Fund aimed at creating more affordable housing. The caucus is made up of a dozen municipal mayors including Basran.

“In the past, there have been other pools of funding available, for example, the rapid housing initiative, which hasn’t maybe rolled out as quickly as we would like to see, nor has it reached mid-sized communities like Kelowna,” Basran said.

The statement from the caucus reads in part: “To be effective, the program must be easy to access and as flexible as possible. Cities should be empowered to use the funding to meet individual communities’ needs including hiring staff, updating permitting systems, streamlining processes, acquiring land, and other solutions that will get the job done faster and see more housing built. There is no shortage of housing applications coming in, we just need the capacity and resources to expedite them.”

The B.C. Urban Mayors Caucus believes the Housing Accelerator Funding should be disbursed to local governments without requiring matching provincial funding or project approval up front.

Typically with housing funds, Basran said, the federal government will release the money only when the province steps up to match it.

“Sometimes some provinces can. Sometimes they can’t. And what we’re saying is, we appreciate (matching funds) would be great, (but) make this money available to municipalities now without having to wait for matching funds,” Basran said. “Let’s get this money flowing and out the door.”