Vacancy rate for family homes ‘essentially zero’ in Kelowna

A new report to Kelowna city council highlights the problems many families have finding housing in Kelowna.

The report, which aimed to give council solutions to the lack of housing diversity in Kelowna, points out that sparse rental market, “specifically family-friendly rental units, is having an impact on the quality of life for Kelowna residents and for those moving to our community.”

Numbers from the Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation put rental vacancy rates in Kelowna at 0.7 per cent, a statistic the report notes falls “well short” of the 3 per cent goal outlined in the city’s official community plan.

But for families needing three or more bedrooms the situation is even worse: the rate for three-bedroom rental units in Kelowna is “essentially zero.”

The report also states that there are 1,048 “purpose-built rental housing units” about to go up in the city.While those units should ease some of the strain on the city’s rental market, the report points out that most aren’t appropriate for large families.

“Fewer than 50 of the 1,048 units would be family-oriented three-bedroom units, offering limited relief given the current 0 per cent vacancy rate for three-bedroom units…” it reads.

Deborah Guthrie is the Executive Director Habitat for Humanity Okanagan. She said she constantly has families coming in asking for Habitat’s help, and many of them are in “really dire situations.”

She said she’s had one family come to her that was living in a tent because they couldn’t find an appropriate place.

“And families that are in places, some of them are not very nice places,” she said, citing stories rodent infestations, black mold, and three or four kids crammed into one bedroom.

“It’s heartbreaking,” she adds.

While Neil Armstrong and his family aren’t living in an infested home, the father of two boys says they’ve had an extremely rough time since selling their house last October.

Armstrong says their old house was snapped up after just hours on the market (at above the asking price), and because it went so fast they needed to rent while they searched for a new permanent home.

“When we started looking around, there was literally zero places out there that were of any value” that were big enough, he said.

He said one of the few three-bedroom places they did find online was snapped up after being listed for only a couple of hours, and that the people who took it ended up paying $200 over the asking price.

“They come on the market, they hit [the internet], they’re on there for an hour or two, and they're gone - that’s it,” Armstrong said.

Eventually, the Amrstrongs managed to squeeze into a place by lucking into a place that wasn’t even advertised yet. They agreed to it sight unseen, and Armstrong says there are numerous problems there.

He says all the moving around has been stressful on his boys, and he worries what impact it will have on them.

“It’s tough on them, because they don’t have that sense of stability,” he said.

Luke Stack is the executive director of Kelowna’s Society for Hope, which provides low-cost housing in Kelowna.

“When people are arriving at our doorstep they are so stressed out and upset, and you can feel the tension on them,” he said.

He chalked the lack of family housing in Kelowna up to a couple of factors, including the amount of space it takes to build family housing versus single-unit dwellings, the different market that family-friendly units target, and the fact that many Kelowna families don’t seem to be as comfortable living in apartments as families in other cities.

City staff’s report to council lays out steps that can be taken to help alleviate some of these problems.

It first suggests changing the amount given out by the rental housing grants program, switching from a flat $5,000 per unit to a tiered approach, giving more money for units with more bedrooms.

It also suggests temporarily injecting an additional $200,000 into the program over two years, bring the total amount invested in the program to $420,000 annually.

Stack, who is also a city councilor, recused himself when council discussed the housing report, but in an Aug. 24 interview said he thinks the recommendations “couldn’t hurt.”

Stack says he doesn’t think the changes will hurt the dire housing situation, “but I don’t think it will solve it either.”

He points out that the savings the changes would lead to don’t really add up to a lot in the grand scheme of things, but are an important “expression of intent” by council showing it supports making more family housing available.