May 15, 2007
This evening`s CBC news contains an important story about the need for more rent geared to income housing in the oil patch boom towns of Alberta. Typically the boom has created a housing shortage in towns like Fort McMurray where almost all the rental units are spoken for and the landlords are charging excessive rents and imposing excessive fees as the price of gaining rental accomodation.
Many of the service workers who have found employment cannot afford or cannot find housing. This has always been a problem in most of our major cities. It is inexcusable to see it emerge as a serious problem in oil rich Alberta.
It is a relatively easy problem to fix with a program of land assembly and construction of rent geared to income housing administered by either a co-operative housing authority or a government housing corporation.
I worked in this area at the start of my career in the 1970s and I am proud of what my colleagues accomplished.We assembled land, built units largely by proposal call to the private sector and by using federal and provincially funded programs we ensured a steady supply of affordable housing units for people throughout Manitoba.
Oil rich Alberta with its huge fiscal surplus is well positioned to solve this problem. It should get on with it before the housing problems spoil the good that the oil boom has delivered
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