RESIDENT HOUSING BY KEITH LEGGIT

I think the point he made in the piece was that if Fernie businesses participate in subsidized housing (by the City of Fernie) they should pay a wage that reflects the true cost of living in Fernie. Nothing forces a business to participate. It would be an optional arrangement. But if a business wants a stable workforce, and a spot in the "affordable housing" it would be a good idea.

If the City of Fernie provides cheap housing for regional employees, all it does is continue to allow businesses to pay low wages and the business owners pocket the difference between a low wage and fair wage as greater profits. The City of Fernie should not be in the business of making more profits for the regional businesses on the backs of the Fernie tax payers and residents.

There is a reason IGS provides low cost housing for their employees. Stable and reliable employees. I think that was mentioned, too.
If a business wants to simply pay minimum wage and continually sycle through empolyees, deal with the inconsistency of service and resulting unhappy customers, let them. That's a business decision. That does not build a community.

Businesses pay way more tax than any one else , we also pay DMO tax , why not go after these renter that are charging $900 per room and filling up there houses heaps for travelers getting in some cases $5000 a month, useing our roads , water and garbage, they do not pay extra tax! there the ones making the housing problem in Fernie by going after the $$$$ instead of renting @ anominal rent to locals, I just feel the Businesses in Fernie do way to much to have any one person put any more on them, Thes rental houses should all be taxed @ a business tax rate and those taxes should be put back into Fernie

I agree that people taking advantage of the lack of housing by loading homes with 5 renters at $500 a pop isn't helping the cause, but there are many residents that build suites and rent them at reasonable amounts. Unless collecting rent under the table, these residents have to claim this rent as income and thus pay taxes.

As it stands the businesses succeeding in Fernie are those that are already going above and beyond the average pay rate in BC. Island Lake Lodge, Fernie Lodging Company, IGS, Yamagoya, The Brickhouse....all examples of businesses paying above minimum wage to retain employees over the long term. Some of these businesses even provide housing for their staff. These businesses will continue to succeed in the future as it is a well known fact that employees can make or break a business.

I agree that some businesses are unable to be competitive in this realm - they're just too small and perhaps can't afford the overhead, but there are other ways they can keep employees happy. Maybe the answer is profit sharing with long term employees - that way you only share what has been made above and beyond costs etc.

Regardless, this is not a problem that has one single solution. In combination with the City, the community and businesses we should be able to at least make headway.

Looking forward to the next article Keith!

do we realy care ? or is this something to bitch over , in Calgary there put on the street! problem no problem , housing is a government problem and thats final so we should just all get over it,

I usually stay out of these but do you actually think the homeless in Calgary are put onto the streets and ignored?

I use to work for the Calgary drop in center,
homeless are just pawns for others to use to make money off , for for religous perposes, if anyone did realy care there would not be any homeless in the first world

Interesting view. I apologize, I just realized I changed the theme of this string to a homeless issue.

We do not have a homeless problem here, so lets not go there. It is shelter we are talking about.

After reviewing the above discussion and reading Keiths article, I would have to agree with powwow.
Keiths article was clearly ill researched and irresponsible! We should be not targeting different members of the community & creating a them and us scenario. Rather we should be looking at this problem from a government perspective and I think we should all consider that this is also a global issue. (Across the world housing prices are escalting in Resort towns, making it hard for young families to reside in such areas. Often houses are brought from foreigners with a strong dollar). Not saying that we should target these people or the lucky landlord who manages to make cash in hand large profits every winter or the lucky local contractors booked solidy at good profits or the extremly lucky real estate agents who make excellent commission on selling homes at such high prices...have I covered everyone in the community??
If a lucky resident manages to secure a "spot" in affordable housing because of a generous employeer..what about the residents of Fernie who are not so lucky to have employeers who are not so generous??
From what I read above, what we are in fact doing is targeting business owners who cannot afford to pay more than the required wage, businesses are already being named as on the good list....ie IGS. If I was a protential business owner looking to set myroots in Fernie, I would think long and hard about the fact that I might be put on the other list!!
I think we should work together as a community to address this issue. We all know Fernie is an amazing place and I would say as residents of Fernie we should concentrate on adressing the problem with srong accurate statistics and polls.We should be reading articles on how other resort towns locally, nation wide and globally have adressed the issue we are now faced with.Lets not create a segregated community in an effort to slove an issue that is close to all our hearts.!