Yellowknife city councillor pitches work camps as band-aid for city's housing crunch

A Yellowknife city councillor has proposed a temporary measure to ease the city's rental housing crunch: work camps.

"I want to focus on building permanent housing, but the reality is we just do not have the time to wait as we have hundreds of workers coming to our city this summer, and increasing over the next few years, for projects such as Giant Mine," Coun. Rob Warburton told city council on Monday.

"Work camps are the only form of accommodation that can be deployed quickly and temporarily to meet the surge of demand that is coming from out of territory right now."

At Monday afternoon's governance and priorities committee meeting, Warburton presented a motion directing city administration to bring forward a zoning bylaw amendment that would add temporary work camps to Kam Lake, and any other "appropriate zone," and to make recommendations related to camps' duration, public access and security.

The motion was later revised to direct administration to draft a memo about a zoning bylaw amendment, and any other amendments, that would enable the establishment of temporary work camps in the city. 

The Northwest Territories' housing crisis has been well documented, and in recent years renters have decried the lack of suitable, affordable homes in the territory's capital city.

According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Yellowknife's vacancy rate was 1.8 per cent in 2021, down from 3.2 per cent in 2020. Though at least three new rental apartment buildings are under construction, Warburton says the housing shortage demands a swifter fix. 

"Building things, especially housing, is very, very hard, and very slow compared to the speed of the changing demand for housing," he said.

In Warburton's view, work camps are the only viable way to mitigate the impact of an influx of out-of-town workers on Yellowknife's rental market. 

It's unclear how many workers will descend on the city for this summer's construction season, and over the next few years, but Warburton estimates it will be in the hundreds. 

"The last thing you want is companies competing with residents for apartments," he told CBC News after Monday's meeting. "That's what's happening right now and it's going to get worse… if we don't start this process."

Though Warburton pitched work camps as a quick fix to the city's rental shortage, they aren't likely to be approved and built anytime soon. 

"Changing a bylaw is very time consuming… this should have come up a year ago to get things done for this summer," Warburton said.

Still, he hopes the memo city administration comes back with will contain options for enabling work camps to be set up sooner.