Half the funds earmarked for Burnaby complex under construction for six years
Frances Bula
Sun
Housing Minister Rich Coleman committed $500,000 from its $250-million housing endowment fund Monday to help Habitat for Humanity build affordable housing in B.C.
The provincial commitment is the first of its kind in Canada and a welcome one, said Jim Lippert from Habitat.
“We’ve been trying to pick up the pace quite a bit. This money allows us to increase the rate at which we’re building.”
At $25,000 per home, that will help Habitat with another 20 homes.
It has built 67 in B.C. altogether over about a decade.
Lippert said about half the money will help Habitat finish off the last 11 units of a 27-unit complex it has been building in Burnaby for the last six years.
As well, it will go into projects in Victoria, Nanaimo, Sunshine Coast, Kamloops and Kootenay-Boundary as they are approved by the national office.
Coleman said the housing endowment fund was set up to support innovative efforts like Habitat’s.
“The housing endowment fund provides support to housing programs that don’t fit other funding models and in this case will make it possible for more British Columbian families to purchase their homes.”
For one Vancouver resident, the news means he may be closer to moving into his own home.
Randy Forrester is slated to get the next unit finished in Burnaby, which will allow him to move his wife and two young children out of the basement suite where they now live in Point Grey.
Forrester has been putting in the required 500 hours of his own work on the project for a year and a half, when he’s not working at his job at a cable manufacturer in Burnaby, and is looking forward to moving in.
Forrester, who earns just a little less than the $42,000 a year defined as average working-class income for the city, will get to buy the house with a mortgage that will be set at no more than 25 per cent of his gross income, with property taxes included.
© The Vancouver Sun 2008