Does Council ACTUALLY care about affordable housing?
Or are we at the mercy of eternal NIMBYism.
Hello.
Happy March! For my fellow Hart folks, how we doing? Are we all okay with that lovely feeling of seeing 2-3 feet of crusty brown snow in OUR front yards then driving into town and seeing the start of all those melted, green front lawns?
I want to begin this newsletter with a real and sincere shout out to The Citizen and, in particular, Colin Slark. Tracking local news in our community via Colin’s reporting has honestly been such a welcome addition to my morning ritual over the last month and I’m very grateful for him and the platform that enables him to do this important work.
Worth mentioning, I have historically had my beefs with the Citizen but, in general, I think two things can be true of this media era: real local journalists doing good work should be supported, AND we should keep a critical mind when consuming news/media (this newsletter very much included) - so hopefully you folks can make a point to stop by their website and show Colin some love.
Council vs Trailer Parks: A Recap
Last April, I wrote this newsletter:
PG’s NIMBY driven decision making.
The takeaway from that newsletter was simple: when a city (and its province) is in an affordable housing crisis, adding affordable housing should be a no-brainer—especially for a Mayor who ran on a housing-first platform.
Instead, Council caved to NIMBYs worries about poor people in their neighborhoods.
The newsletter largely focuses on City Council voting down a proposed mobile home park in the Hart because of NIMBYs writing letters to Council, and their own bias towards what kind of people live in trailer parks. I don’t want to toot my own horn but it’s a good read and helpful background.
That said, I won’t rehash the whole thing but this is the important bit from April 2023:
A quick evaluation of the economics.
2 years later, the developer has come back to the table with a revised proposition - one that lowers the density of the proposed mobile home park (approximately 165 homes down from 220 from the initial proposition) and one that acknowledges some of the “neighborhood concerns” that came in the first attempt.
Comparable listings in PG (and using Edmonton as a comparator for new build parks) put new build mobile home like this in the $250,000~ range. This isn’t a market evaluation by any stretch as L&M has not listed approximate values but kind of a ballpark with what information I do have.
The average single family home in Prince George is approaching $500,000.
So this proposal is offering approximately 165 single family homes in the ballpark of ~40-50% the average housing cost in Prince George. Again, I acknowledge I’m making some assumptions on what is going to happen with the proposed park but I think this is with in a reasonable margin of error.
So with that assumption acknowledged, how is this proposal even a question? Providing L&M Engineering and Westcan Properties pass the appropriate safety and viability checks (which were never brought up as concerns in 2023 at the initial proposal), voting this down AGAIN should be read as a fairly deliberate self-sabotage on the City’s behalf - RIGHT?
Zooming out
One of the core beefs that the citizens of Prince George have with the City (both the capital C City admin/council and the lower case c city) is the perception of homelessness and crime downtown.
At the same time, every reasonable person I talk to can acknowledge that the fact an average 1-2 bedroom rental is $1650/month (on the low end) is an unreasonable barrier for a lot of people to overcome - it’s hard to say how folks stop being homeless in this market yet we’re all still pretty mad about it.
Now imagine if you’re a young couple in their mid 20’s working average, living wage paying jobs, renting one of these 2br at that price. The idea of buying into a $400-500,000 house feels impossible - the downpayment, the cost of upkeep, insurance, etc - it’s just not doable without significant help from external forces.
But if 165 homes enter the market at the $250-300,000 range - there’s a window of opportunity for that young couple to get out of their rental and into a home that is building equity for their future - maybe it isn’t their forever home but 5-10 years of paying their own mortgage versus a landlord who owns 5 other properties? That’s a win.
“But Darrin, trailers depreciate in value and it’s a sunk investment!”
First of all, if I’m paying $1650/month to some landlords bank account, or $1650 in to my own equity, even depreciating slightly - I’m picking the latter every time and you cannot convince me otherwise.
Secondly, there’s just no evidence to support that modern modular home park properties do actually depreciating like they did in the 1990’s when that perception first emerged. Source 1 | Source 2
This is a whole separate newsletter topic but so much of our feelings around trailer parks/modular home parks is dated to data and perceptions from the 1990s that simply are not true in 2025.
Anyways, back to my point here - affordable development allows that base layer of rental housing to empty out - folks who have been waiting to enter the housing market while occupying these rentals can open them up for folks who are one layer below them trying to get into housing at all. Hopefully, if the market forces work the way we want them to, adding stock does lower prices - even marginally and we see that spill down into some of the other socioeconomic problems in the City.
City Council has the opportunity to do something very serious here
City Council has delayed this development by 2+ years.
They’ve forced the secondary proposal to downsize the density by about 25%.
Mayor Simon Yu in 2023:
“Based on my knowledge of the neighbourhood, the trailer park… is kind of out of the character of the neighbourhood,” Yu said. “To put a trailer park so close to a relatively high-end neighbourhood, I have a problem with that.”
Councillor Brian Skakun in 2023:
“I went out there when the snow had already been melting for two or three weeks - I couldn’t even turn my vehicle around in one of those streets, I had to actually back all the way out. (And) there is no public transit out there that I know of,” Coun. Brian Skakun said.
The road infrastructure simply isn’t built to accommodate that many new residents, he said.
It’s NIMBYism and it’s a councillor who can’t turn his truck around on undeveloped and unmaintained roads. I cannot believe these are cited reasons this did not get approved on the last attempt.
The truth of the matter is that we need to add housing supply of all kinds - and although this is American data, our addiction to only building big McMansions at the edge of town needs to end:
I am writing this newsletter to hopefully draw what little magnifying glass I can to this decision because I see it as endemic to this City’s future. If you care about this place, I hope you pay attention to how Council votes here because I see it as a symbol of their priorities and how serious they are about housing.
If you’re a City Councillor and you do vote this down, I hope you can explain yourself better than basic, boring “ew poor people living near rich people” NIMBYism and not being able to turn your truck around on undeveloped roads.
Alright - that’s all I got. Now I am going to go back to the couch and keep resting away this cold and binging Parks and Recreation (a show that is so unfathomably related to this newsletter’s core content).
Thanks for reading as always!
Excellent newsletter. Totally agree. Those are such flimsy reasons for not allowing a development. I have lost faith in several on council but I expect more out of Brian.
Great points. We are in a housing crisis. Building mansions in university heights isn’t the answer. We need housing at all levels. I bought my house in 2021 under 350,000 and today would never be able to buy the same house. This doesn’t give younger generations any hope to the future.