PG hanging on during provincial ‘crisis spending’ through housing crunch

Despite housing costs that would make Vancouverites jealous, Prince George is still in the midst of a rental crunch.

The average cost of rent plus utilities in PG is $773, compared to the provincial average of $988.

CEO for The BC Non Profit Housing Association Tony Roy has noted a second straight year of of ‘crisis-level spending’, though acknowledging Prince George faces some special circumstances.

“The fact is that things continue to get worse each year because we haven’t had any purpose-built rental housing. Prince George faces some unique circumstances because with all of the development in resource-based communities throughout the north, anybody who’s coming up there and finding that they don’t have their permits or place, didn’t pass a drug test, or that there’s no jobs available with their set of skills… A lot of those people who are going to all areas of the north draw back to Prince George when they are unable to find work. So that mean in PG you have -even in the summertime- homeless shelters that are completely full, and extra pressure on the rental market.”

That said, the situation isn’t quite as dire as in other parts of the province, mostly due to the prevalence of certain housing.

“The truth is, a lot of the rental housing in Prince George is in basement suites, renting houses, other things that weren’t purposely built to be rented. Prince George ranked 23rd out of the 72 municipalities we looked at.”

Some numbers were downright ugly.

“There was a disproportionate number of people who were in that category of people who are critically overspending, people who are spending more than 50% of their gross income on rent.”

20% of PG residents fall into that category, and Roy says a lack of housing diversity is playing a role…

“Some of that has to do with supply. We’re not building rental housing, and we haven’t been building social housing or affordable housing. We haven’t built much for the past 20 years.”

The BC Non-Profit Housing Association will release a detailed breakdown of PG housing this Monday.