FRIDAY AUG 26, 2016 VOL. 42, NO. 80
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Logger Sports Show Photos and thank yous
New group on affordable housing to pick up where others left off
MERIBETH DEEN EDITOR
Coltrane shows off his band-aid on his way out of Vancouver Coastal Health’s Immunization Clinic on Tuesday. Meribeth Deen, photo
Councilor voices opposition to pipeline expansion MERIBETH DEEN EDITOR
Bowen Island Councilor Sue Ellen Fast brought a Bowen Island perspective to a Ministerial hearing on the Kinder Morgan Trans-Mountain pipeline expansion project last week. Fast says that council received the invitation to this event at too short of notice to put together an official statement, so she spoke on behalf of herself. “Our council said a number of things about fossil fuels and risks to our environment in Howe Sound, but not specifically to this proposal because we understood that we didn’t have a role to play in the input, although our population sees a number of impacts,” she told the panel. Fast then went on to out-
line statements made by Bowen’s council that touch on issues related to the pipeline expansion project. These statements include a letter to the BC Climate Leadership Team supporting actions to reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change, the right for Bowen citizens to live in a healthy environment, to the Environmental Assessment office in regards to concerns about LNG tanker safety and negative impacts in Howe Sound and to Member of Parliament Pamela Goldsmith-Jones asking for changes to the environmental assessment before a decision is made on the Woodfibre LNG process. Fast also told the panel that she has heard a lot from citizens about new project proposals from the fossil fuels industry.
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New group on affordable housing to pick up where others left off The Bowen Island Affordable Housing Facebook page hosts daily, and often lively conversations. Members of the group do their own research, post insights and articles showing parallels in other communities. Several members of the group are now preparing to launch a group to bring these voices together in person to facilitate concrete action. Once it gets going, this committee will be building on years, and thousands of dollars worth of work done by similar groups that came before it. “We’ve been through this before,” says Richard Best, a former member of the now defunct Bowen Island Community Housing Association (BICHA). “In 2006, a lot of people were in very dire situations. There were people living out in the bush. There was no where for seniors to go.” Best says he started working with the BICHA because he believed housing was the fundamental issue affecting the health of Bowen’s community. The group held a symposium on housing that was attended by Senator Larry Campbell, they presented to council, and they fundraised. The community donated $40 thousand to BICHA and much of that was put towards two studies: the Affordable Housing Needs Assessment and the Affordable Housing Strategy. After the publication of these reports, council created the Affordable Housing Working Group. This took some of the membership of the previous group, and set out to come up with a plan to tackle the issue focusing on the use of community lands. Tim Wake was on both committees. Prior to purchasing a home on Bowen in 2006 he worked with the Whistler Housing Authority. “The aim of the Affordable Housing Working Group was to replicate the work of the Whistler Housing Authority, which in 12 years created more than 1200 units of affordable housing,” says Wake. “The Bowen working group managed to come up with a game plan to make it happen, and council voted in favour of it so quickly my jaw dropped. I’d say this was our biggest success. Then, we worked with successive councils to get it off the ground and we were just not embraced. In 2012, we gave up and the group folded.”
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