Qualicum Beach is looking for a qualified consultant who will help create an attainable market housing plan for the town.
Staff sought council permission during its regular meeting on April 16 to allow them to initiate a request for proposals to determine the types of consultants or teams that may be willing to undertake this initiative for the town.
This will be undertaken in conjunction with the town's 2025 Official Community Plan review.
The goal is to determine actionable options and recommendations that will support the town's housing initiatives that minimizes reliance on direct, ongoing public sector subsidies.
The consultant will be mandated to engage a broad range of interest-holders and collect feedback on analysis, alternatives and decisions. Their study will be collaborated with the OCP review.
Town planner Luke Sales said a steering committee would develop a criteria to evaluate potential solutions.
"The consultant can cast a wide net and engage the community and say 'what types of ideas do you have for creative housing solutions we haven't considered before,'" said Sales.
He pointed out the solutions could be anything from co-operatives, other types of financial models, tenure arrangements or rental lease to own. It could also be physically different solutions like tiny homes or RV-style living.
"Then the next step would be that each of those proposed solutions from the community or interest groups, would be evaluated using those criteria that we identified earlier," said Sales. "So, it establishes a relatively neutral, unbiased process to ensure that we can consider any proposal that comes in and kind of assess it against those community values that we established earlier."
The solutions that rate the highest, Sales said, are considered to be the most feasible.
""Each of those would be developed in more detail by the consultant," said Sales. "At the end of the day we would end up with a small set. So, only five to eight of the most feasible solutions. So, rather than, identifying a hundred possible ways the town could go. We only need a handful. We need to know what the most viable paths forward are."
Council unanimously endorsed staff recommendation.
