Yellowknife developer said Bellanca was going to be affordable housing. Here's why it won't be
CBC
When Borealis Development Inc. first envisioned renovating the former Bellanca building in downtown Yellowknife, the dream was for it to be 100 per cent affordable housing.
Now when the building opens in downtown Yellowknife there may be a few units that will be considered affordable, but at least the vast majority will be offered at market rental value.
Afzal Suri, co-founder and developer of Borealis Development Inc. which owns the building, spoke at the N.W.T.'s standing committee on social development meeting in mid-November about obstacles private developers face around offering low cost housing.
"So there weren't proper incentives to create that affordable housing, so what we had to do was change our course a couple of times," he said at the meeting.
The committee meeting was about the N.W.T. adopting housing as a human right.
Housing is considered "affordable" if it costs less than 30 per cent of a household's before-tax income, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). Affordable housing can be offered by government, the private sector or the non-profit sector.
Yellowknife Mayor Rebecca Alty said there are currently no private affordable housing options in the city.
Borealis Development Inc. isn't the first private company that announced it planned to offer affordable housing.
In 2021, Range Lake Developments purchased several buildings throughout the city and said the plan was to offer affordable housing.
CBC News reached out to Range Lake Developments to ask if it followed through on the plan, but never received a response.
At the time, the company said it was coming up with a plan with Housing N.W.T. and the CMHC. Housing N.W.T. said it's not involved in the project.
Alty said in order to offer private affordable housing, there needs to be government programs.
"It needs the capital dollars in order to build," she said.
"The market is not going to come in and say we're going to build this at a loss."
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