There has been a lot going on at the Cortes Community Housing Society. They are starting to provide housing for the community, are supporting changes to the island’s bylaws and are acting as a matchmaker for potential renters and landlords. However the first story I want to cover this morning is about the aquifer study that is about to begin.
“We just received a grant from the Real Estate Foundation to develop an aquifer health assessment for our island. A lot of the islands south of us are having water problems and we really want to get ahead of this by being proactive and understanding what’s happening on our own island. With climate change, obviously many of the assumptions of how things work are changing, but getting baseline and putting in together some things that we as a community can do to protect our water systems seems important to do before we have the kind of problems that we’ve seen in other communities,” explained Sadhu Johnston, Executive Director of the Housing Society.
“What we’d be looking to do is to map the aquifers on the island and assess the aquifer health. We are working right now with the community forest on the above ground ecological system mapping. Those maps are very outdated. So we’re working with the community forest and co funding some work to map the above ground.”
“The aquifer mapping would really be the below ground. Then you could layer those on the map and understand where there are sensitive ecosystems either above or below the surface.”
“We’re looking to finalize a contract and hire a contractor that has done this kind of work before.”
“We learned about how other islands have been conducting this kind of work. So we were looking to utilize their experiences and the expertise of the team contracting to oversee that work.”
“We’d be looking at the wells across the island. Mapping what we know about those as well as, where the aquifers are and are they being recharged? Are they healthy? Is there more that needs to be done?” There’s, there’s things that we can do on the surface that over time can support aquifer health.”
Cortes Currents: So when you’re talking about doing surface mapping, you’re referring to things that would impact shallow wells, wetlands, creeks. that kind of stuff?
Sadhu Johnston: “Exactly, sensitive ecosystems across the island, not just aquatic ones.”
Cortes Currents: During the droughts in 2022 and 2023, the water levels were very low in Basil Creek and a few of the neighbouring shallow wells stopped recharging. This was obviously connected to the drought, but could this help us identify any other factors?
Sadhu Johnston: I’m not sure to what extent the surface water stream will be identified.
Cortes Currents: Relating to the aquifers, how can you tell whether the water levels have been dropping if we don’t have any previous measurements?
Sadhu Johnston: “The team that we’re bringing on have some methodologies to do that kind of work. They did participate in our learning forum earlier in the year and we’ll be engaging with them with some public forums as a part of this project to share what’s happening and answer questions and engage experts in our own community to participate and contribute.”
Cortes Currents: Do you have any idea when they’re going to start?
Sadhu Johnston: “In the next few weeks.”
Cortes Currents: How much was the grant for, in terms of money?
Sadhu Johnston: “It was around $50,000.”
Cortes Currents: Do you anticipate more studies being needed?
Sadhu Johnston: “I don’t know. A lot of the other islands are much farther ahead of us on this kind work. We’re really just looking to get started and see where the journey takes us.”
Cortes Currents: So tell us about some of the other things that Cortes Housing Society has been working on.
Sadhu Johnston: “We are looking to deliver housing on Rainbow Ridge. As you know we didn’t receive BC housing funding to build out the 24 units. So we’re retooling a little bit and looking to build the project in stages so we can deliver housing sooner. We’re looking at building 7 units at a time, and trying to make them as affordable as possible. By reducing costs, and ideally using local materials, local workers, we can deliver some housing affordably still, looking at mostly one bedroom, little cabins, townhouses.”
“We recently received a grant from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to develop an assessment of how we can use renewable energy, like a geothermal system, to provide heating and cooling systems for the development.”
“We are also exploring how we could develop an affordable home ownership approach on the other end of the property, closer to Cemetery Road.”
“I had the opportunity this summer to visit a number of. Community land trusts down South Orcas Island and Lopez. They’ve got a really successful approach where they continue to own the land as a community, but provide 99 year leases to members of the community to farm it or to build a home on it. That’s an approach that we’re looking at where we would make smaller lots available for people to build their own structures, and we would provide water, electricity and septic.”
“Through our newly purchased property on 671 Sutil Point Road, we have provided housing for the doctors, which is working out really well so far and are exploring how best to utilize the rest of the property. Looking at rezoning so we can build some more cabins.”
“We’re currently replacing the septic system. Once that’s done, we’ll be able to fully occupy the main house. We’re looking for tenants for that main house, it’s a 4 bedroom house right now.”
“There’s a garage where , if we pursue the zoning changes, we could build out a 1 bedroom suite.”
“Then we’re looking at if we could build out some additional cabins on the property with a community garden in the centre.”
“We also have a shop on that property. We’re looking for proposals for how to utilize that shop to provide benefit to the community. We’re already seeing some really interesting, so we’re going to be looking at evaluating those.”
“Outside of our own properties, we did a housing forum in December almost a year ago. We heard loud and clear that there are people that have places that are currently empty and they would like support getting them tenanted.
“They’re not sure how to do that. So we’ve been exploring how we can be supportive of getting more of the currently underutilized homes occupied. Part of our learning has been exploring how other places are doing those kinds of programs.”
“We’ve just been very passively connecting people cause we hear, ‘Hey, I’ve got a place that I could rent, but I’m, I don’t really want to advertise it. Could you help me find a tenant?’ so we’ve been going through our wait list, and through people that we’re hearing from, trying to connect people. That’s been quite helpful for some folks, and we’re looking at how we might formalize that into a service where we would help connect landlords with tenants and vice versa.”
“We have been on a learning journey as a community since last December. Almost every month, we’ve been doing different on zoom and learning what other places are doing, different technologies and approaches. We’ve had folks from throughout the region participating, so we’re learning together. It’s been really interesting. Those are all on our website, the videos or the podcasts that were produced.”
“We’ve just launched our new website with a building trades directory . It’s still in its early stages, but you can go on there now and find different building trades. We’re hoping to continue to add people in the building trades to that directory. So if you’re looking for someone to do work on your property, it’s easy to find someone on Cortes rather than having to bring people in.”
“We’ve also been actively involved in the zoning bylaw that’s being rewritten and that has significant implications for what people can build on their own properties. If you’re building an additional structure on your property, that’s great rental opportunities.”
“People being enabled to add more housing onto their own properties could be a real contributor to providing more rental housing on island. We’ve been actively involved in that process and providing input and giving suggestions for what community members can can submit to the SRD as well.”
Cortes Currents: One of the things that you have been assisting is a long term resident of Cortes looking for someone to finance him for approximately $400,000 in private lending.
Sadhu Johnston: “There’s a member of our community who is working to purchase a property and so many of our members of our community have three or four jobs, contributing in different ways, but that’s a little harder to get a mortgage. Some properties are hard to get mortgages for, maybe they’re built unconventionally.”
“We’re really just testing the waters to see if there is an appetite to do more private lending within our own community instead of having people not having the opportunity to purchase because they may not fit the qualifications that are required from traditional lending.”
Cortes Currents: How would that relate to say a bank lending, in terms of things like interest, and also how would you know if it’s a good loan?
Sadhu Johnston: “Well, firstly, it has to be a good property because that’s ultimately your security and if something goes wrong, you get the property. Private lending can depend on the kind of deal that you structure. It happens all the time, all over the country, all over the world. Like a traditional mortgage, it can be backed by the property itself.”
“So let’s say there’s a million dollar property. Someone has built up some cash and they put $200,000 down on that property, but they need to borrow the rest. If they do that with a private lender or two private lenders, they would negotiate an interest rate. Usually it’s more attractive to the lender than a traditional mortgage would be. It’s usually higher interest rate because they’re taking a bit of a risk, but it’s backed by the property.”
“If you’re on Cortes and you have money invested in the stock market or whatever, and you wanted to contribute to addressing the housing challenges on Cortes, you could invest that way and support a local person to purchase a property.”
Cortes Currents: What would the housing society’s role be in these kinds of loans? Would you be an advisor, facilitator, or just an introductory mechanism?
Sadhu Johnston: “We haven’t established a protocol for our role at this point. We were merely trying to do some matchmaking and to let the community know about the opportunity. The individual looking purchase doesn’t really want to be public about what they’re trying to do, it’s a small community. So as a matchmaker, we could find people that might be interested, connect them with each other and let them pursue the discussions from there.”
“Same with some of the rental properties where you’re hearing from property owners that have a property that they’re interested in renting, but don’t want to be public about it. We could let people know about that opportunity and just connect them.”
Links of Interest:
- Cortes Community Housing Society website
- What We Heard Report of The Cortes Housing Forum Held on December 2nd, 2023
- Articles about, or mentioning, the Cortes Community Housing Society
Top image credit: Trail Maintenance work bee at Rainbow Ridge – submitted photo
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