Housing and development was a major focus for the City of Campbell River this year.
When asked about some of the city’s highlights of 2019, City Manager Deborah Sargent was quick to mention the improvements made to housing and development.
“We worked on everything from working with BC Housing on developing supportive housing for our homeless and the most vulnerable people in our community,” Sargent says. “From that end of the spectrum, into market housing where we’ve seen 273 multi-family units developed in 2019 and 252 of those are rental.”
Despite that, Sargent says the city is still seeing a very low vacancy rate.
“We’re looking at ways that we can work with all of the players in this field, including BC Housing, in terms of how to support additional rental housing in the community.”
With the growth in housing and development comes new job positions at City Hall.
“We’ve got new residential neighbourhoods under development, so our Community Development Department has expanded to include a Senior Planner who has been focusing on housing and community development,” Sargent added.
In 2020, a new Community Development Engineer will be coming on board as well to help with approvals for projects such as the new Jubilee Heights subdivision.
Sargent says the new development at Jubilee Heights has 30 lots already developed and sold, with an additional 30 houses soon to be approved for development.
