Modular housing for health-care workers coming to Bridgewater

The Town of Bridgewater has entered into a purchase and sale agreement with the Housing Trust of Nova Scotia to create new places to live for health-care workers who are needed in the community.

The intention is to develop a plot of land near the South Shore Regional Hospital. The sale is contingent on the town rezoning that section of land. If and when that happens, 20 modular townhouse-style homes will be built on the property.

"It's huge," said Bridgewater Mayor David Mitchell. "We have a regional hospital and, like most communities that have a hospital, the need for staff is dire. So being able to entice staff to come in from all over the world really is great, but you need housing for that. And this starts to address that problem for sure."

The land is on Glen Allen Drive, not far from the hospital.

"It's only a few blocks from the hospital and is on our public transit route which, for newcomers to our community, just makes it easier and more affordable for them to get around."

The pending sale agreement for $385,000 is born from the province's housing for health care initiative. As part of that program, the Housing Trust of Nova Scotia is using $20 million in provincial funding to find housing for health-care workers.

The province has identified the South Shore as an area in acute need of housing for health-care professionals. Other counties in similar need are Antigonish, Sydney, Colchester, Cumberland, Guysborough and Inverness.

Mitchell said the sale price is market value. But he said the municipality will spend some of the money raised through the sale on affordable housing options in the community.

The prefabricated modular homes will be moved onto the site early in the new year.

Angela Bishop, executive director of the Nova Scotia Housing Trust, said that time frame is a bit too long.

"All the municipalities are governed by the Municipal Act and there's a process for planning and rezoning applications that in all municipalities will push out development plans by four to five months," she said. "And I've heard cases where the development in areas outside of HRM have taken years.

"We could actually call up one of the modular providers and place an order today if it were not for that process," Bishop said.

The town council is moving as fast as it can, Mitchell said. It has already started the process of changing the zoning rules at the site in question to accommodate high-density development.

"I get the urgency and we also want this built as quickly as possible," he said.