Back in January, it looked as though the Belterra co-housing development was likely to be populated by retirees and empty nesters.
At that time there was only one family with one child that had purchased a unit in the development. Now, with construction under way and the first building set for completion at the end of October, there are a total of eight children who will soon be calling Belterra home.
“We were pretty upset for a while because families weren’t signing up,” says developer Roger McGillivray. “So we’re happy to see this change. There are also two units left and they’re designed for families so I hope that’s how it pans out.”
Carmen Yamashita and her husband John are planning to move to Bowen this summer, even though their new home is months away from completion, so that their three kids can start the school year at BICS.
“We found out about co-housing a little more than a year ago, and went to a meeting for a co-housing project in Vancouver but we were priced out,” she says. “When we found out about Belterra, I thought it looked like heaven, but at that point Bowen looked more like a great place to go on holiday instead of a place to live. The obstacles that come with living on an island made it seem unrealistic.”
The main obstacle, says Yamashita, is that her husband has to commute to Surrey four days straight (followed by four days off) for his job with the RCMP.
“We’re calling him the sacrificial dad,” she says. “But he’s four days on, four days off, so when he’s not working he’ll really get to enjoy life here.”
Yamashita will also commute three days per week to her job as a teacher-librarian at Bayview elementary in Kitsilano.
She says that when the couple first decided to take the plunge and buy in to Belterra, they were only slightly concerned that the development seemed to be heavily populated by older people instead of with kids.
“I figured, there’s a school on Bowen with 350 students, so there is no shortage of local kids,” says Yamashita. “Also, when we came to visit Bowen and were walking some of the local trails,
I noticed my kids were afraid of mud and slugs, so I thought it would be really great for them to live in a place where they could reconnect to nature.”
Yamashita says that since other families have bought in to Belterra, they’ve had a chance to get to know them and the kids have already developed connections.
“My son, who’s in Grade 2, is the most hesitant to move to Bowen because he doesn’t want to leave his friends, but there’s another family moving into Belterra with a son his age and they hit it off instantly,” says Yamashita. “There are also two girls slated to be moving in, and my daughter Josie is very excited to meet them.”
