Invermere like many small towns in British Columbia is experiencing a housing crisis. This crisis has been brought on by the exodus of people from cities during covid, an extreme deficit of purpose built rentals, the air BnB rental model, economic inflation, government regulations and a number of other factors, creating towns with lots of spenders and almost no workers.
Every weekend and holiday the town fills up with vacationers and weekend warriors trying to give us a share of their hard earned money. Businesses used to look forward to the influx anxiously anticipating their opportunity to make enough money to stay alive through the long, slower, winter season. Now, with the number of workers limited, businesses, visitors and locals are becoming frustrated with impatient guests, long line ups, reduced service hours. Some businesses have taken to posting signs advising guests to respect the few staff they’ve been able to round up.
The us (locals) against them (visitors & guests) mentality is getting more and more pronounced as we fight for resources in grocery stores, restaurants, pubs, etc. Everyone getting more frustrated as line ups get longer, hours shorter, causing service to further degrade.
What can we do about this? Our community, Pinetree Valley will triple the number of purpose built rentals in Invermere but this isn’t enough. To get our town back on track we need to find ways to help our workforce make the first step to developing equity and long term roots. I have been working with one business owner in particular that asks me how he can help get his employees out of the rental market and into home ownership. Working co-operatively with this business owner we have been able to help a number of his employees make the move from rental housing to home ownership.
Why is this important? First of all home ownership offers the home owner rewards that renting doesn’t. Homeowners have security that their home won’t be sold out from under them, they have the opportunity to make equity, and they have more autonomy to live the way they want in their own space. Second, home ownership helps ensure stability in their workforce. Employees in the rental market are more likely to be transient – looking for greener grass. Helping your employees put down roots lets them focus on the high quality future they can build right here. Third, every new homeowner takes some of the pressure off the rental market freeing up space for new people to make the move to our beautiful little town and start the process of developing roots all over again. And lastly, we are a tourist town, we need to be able to focus our time and attention on customer service, which we can’t do when we feel like the poor country mice. Taking steps to build wealth, and equity in our town benefits all of us.
So what can you do? If you are a business owner the first step is to ask yourself what you are doing to support your employee’s goals. At Generation Homes we are more than happy to sit down with you and your employees and put together individual plans to help them take the first steps towards home ownership.
We will keep working to offer options to homeowners and renters in our town but it’s up to the entire community to participate in the process of lifting each other up. In our comparison of the benefits of home ownership vs rentals – home ownership wins every time. The investment into purpose built rentals is daunting… costs such as bad tenants, repairs, and the huge up front investment (in the millions), market volatility, interest costs, etc all impact the end cost of the rental market. I see posts where people chastise the rental owners for “gouging” regularly. In reality rental owners have to make money to offset the risks inherent in renting or they will not be able to continue renting their properties. Rather than blaming the rental owners, the government, and the town become part of the solution!
The best solution is to help as many people as possible make the move from renters to home owners. 