Saint Andrews battles housing crunch with $500K grant for new apartments
CBC
A project just given the green light by the Town of Saint Andrews will see a 42-unit apartment complex built by the end of next year with help from the town.
The Compass project is led by local developer, Xenia Housing, with help from a $500,000 municipal grant.
"It's very forward thinking of them," said Tressa Bevington, Xenia's president.
"If they weren't able to work with me, this project wouldn't be going ahead."
Housing was a top local issue in the last municipal election, said Mayor Brad Henderson, and council is taking "aggressive action."
"People in our community are tired of hearing other levels of government blame each other and nothing improves," he said.
"We're going to stop making excuses and we're going to do something because people in our community need it."
The last town budget designated $900,000 for housing.
Prior to the Compass project being approved at the site of the old Blue Moon Motel, lesser amounts were contributed toward infrastructure for a 25-unit garden home development at the corner of Bar Road and Mowat Drive and for 10 new housing units off Victoria Terrace, said Paul Nopper, clerk and senior administrator.
The town will get its money back in tax dollars from this latest project over the next 10 years, said Henderson, who also expects a broader and longer-term community payoff.
The word "crisis" has been used in housing studies to describe the situation in Charlotte County, said the mayor.
There's hardly an apartment to be found, he said. The only vacancies are when one tenant moves out and renovations are being done before the next moves in.
According to census figures, the population of Saint Andrews has grown by 14.8 per cent in the last five years, and sits at about 3,000 since the recent municipal amalgamations in the province.
"Diverse" segments of the population are in "dire need," said Henderson.
The Rachel Notley government's consumer carbon tax wound up becoming a weapon the UCP wielded to drum the Alberta NDP out of office. But that levy-and-repayment program, and the wide-ranging "climate leadership plan" around it, also stood as the NDP's boldest, provincial-reputation-altering move in their single-term tenure.