Dear Editor,
The above quote comes from our Mayor, Murray Skeels, speaking about the housing situation here on Bowen.
It jumped out at me as I feel he spoke what I see as a sad truth.
In this particular article he is referring to possible development of Lot 1. It might not be such a long process if we didn’t keep studying the same issues over and over.
Some of the best minds of Bowen came together with a development plan for the community lands under the name ‘surplus lands working group’ in May 2007.
In another article in the same issue of The Undercurrent, councillors were fawning over the sagacity of a representative of BC Housing about solving housing issues.
When asked about specific needs, his honour suggested with an amazing lack of clarity that our housing needs were “a mile wide and an inch deep.”
The helpful representative of BC Housing suggested that a needs analysis and business plan would be necessary, guessing that the cost would be $25,000, but that BC Housing would pick up half the tab. This was where the “F’ word involuntarily left my lips, but harkens back to the mayors recognition of the beginning of a very long process.
You see we already did the needs assessment (also May of 2007) and strategic plan (August 2007).
The irony is that these reports by Eberle Planning, for which Bowen Community Housing Association fund raised to the tune of $40,000, were adopted as Municipal Policy on Affordable Housing in June 2008 and can be found on the Municipal website under “bylaws & policies.”
Surely we know there’s a problem and surely we can simply extrapolate the changes from 2007 to 2016 and make adjustments rather than, as with Snug Cove Plans, doing studies over and over for decades.
Let’s not quibble over a need for 50 units or 63, or get all bent out of shape over the possibility of someone making a buck or someone taking advantage of cheaper housing.
Let’s just get on with healing the community by housing instead of losing citizens.
There is a problem in the functioning of the municipality in my humble opinion. It may be an over focus on process instead of results; it may be a belief that the arbitrarily established 10 acre rule is some kind of sacred thing not to be messed with, or it may be that whomever controls this system simply does not have community health as their highest interest.
I honestly don’t believe that there is any real political will to allow for the creation of diverse housing for a healthy community.
If there were political will, there would be action, not simply more “council is considering” type headlines.
Sincerely,
Richard Best
