The Cortes Community Housing Society will soon break ground on Rainbow Ridge. They are also renting out two houses, are about to explore the possibility of a tiny house village, and hope to launch a homeshare program this summer. There is also news about the aquifer study, more online housing forums, the Cortes Island Trade Directory and Cortes Island’s vacant homes.
“2024 was a banner year for us in many ways,” exclaimed Executive Director Sadhu Johnston.
Bruin Black, the Society’s new Project Manager, added, “This year is going to be a big year in terms of things happening. I’m just excited to see how things unfold.”
Orchard Village
What was special about 2024? What did you accomplish?
Sadhu Johnston: “ I guess the biggest thing is that we got some housing under our belts. We purchased a property with two existing houses on it, and we’re able to get those rented out. I’m really excited to be working with the health association, CCHA to be providing housing to the doctors on the island, which is much needed. We have a second house on the property that’s being rented out to some artists, long time Cortes folks. That’s really great and exciting for us to have housing that we’re able to provide in the community.”
Cortes Currents: Tell me about the woodworking maker’s space.
Sadhu Johnston: “At Orchard Village, the project where we have the houses being rented, we have a good size shop. We put a call out on Tideline for proposals for how to use that shop for community uses and we got a wonderful proposal from Hannu Huuskonen who’s a woodworker on the island. He proposed the idea of setting up a woodworking maker space and those are pretty popular around North America. Shared workshops where people can go and be a member and use tools and use a shop.”
“We’ve established a partnership with the Cortes Community Forest Cooperative, where we will be co funding it and working together to pursue the value added wood strategy that the co-op adopted last year. People can have an annual membership and that gives them access to use the shop and we’ll have commercial grade tools there and hopefully support entrepreneurs and hobbyists alike to have access to a wood shop and hopefully use more local wood for business opportunities.”
On the Webb, the Cortes Trades Directory & New Staff
“We’ve also just got staff and a new website with the Trades Directory on it. So there’s just really a lot going on right now and gearing up to get construction going on Rainbow Ridge too. So it feels like an exciting time.”
Starting Construction on Rainbow Ridge
Cortes Currents: So tell me about this construction on Rainbow Ridge. I understand it’s going to be this Spring?
Sadhu Johnston: “I’ll jump in to start and then Bruin can fill in details. You likely remember that we didn’t get funding to start construction. Three attempts with B C Housing, unfortunately, we haven’t received funding through their program yet. So rather than waiting around for the tides to turn, we decided to go it alone with a Cortes style project.”
“Thanks to Bruin and his knowledge and expertise, we’ve really rejigged the project, found ways to save money and reduce our construction costs.”
Bruin Black: “Some of the difficulties with applying for BC Housing funding is there’s a lot of really strict requirements that aren’t necessarily suitable to a remote island like where we live. A lot of them are incentivized to beef up their designs so that they take a larger chunk of a fee from this large chunk of money that they’re expecting.”
“Part of the challenge was figuring out how to rejig it so the design was more suitable to the site. The current design had this giant retention pond that you might see in an industrial area. It had a lot of complexity. Part of our rejigging process was reducing the complexity and as a result, reducing the cost, while still retaining a lot of the designs that we were given since a lot of time and energy went into creating those too.”
“We’re keeping the existing road. We’re just keeping the design a little more suitable to the site. At the same time, hopefully providing some services to the community, including providing opportunities for local contractors to work and potentially a training program if that’s in the cards.”
Cortes Currents: How many units are you planning to build, and are they any different from the original plans?
Bruin Black: “We’re still planning on building nine.”
Cortes Currents: This year?
Bruin Black: “No, not this year. Sorry, 9 buildings in total on the northern part of the site. The 1st phase would look like community outbuilding /construction staging, material storage area/ seeing how many homes we can build in phase 1. We’re aiming for 2 or 3.”
Sadhu Johnston: “Just to be clear, when he says 2, he’s talking about 2 buildings with 2 units each.”
“Nine buildings is 24 units of housing or homes. The full project is 24 homes that we would aim to create. The original concept was to have them all built all at once, which means you have to bring in a lot of labour.”
“If we stretch that out over a few years, we can really source local material and source local crews. We could train some folks. We’ve been looking at some other programs where workers on the site get Red Seal certification. Maybe there’s a training program we could integrate into it, but then we could get a crew trained up and they could build one building and then move on to build the next and build the next.”
“Maybe we could do that over a 3 or 4 year period. We would fundraise as we go rather than having to raise all of that money in one go. We would be able to also tenant it as we go. So we don’t need to accommodate finding 24 tenants within a couple of months, that happens over a few years.”
“This path forward feels like we get to use more local materials, more local skills, and pace it out as we need. We can utilize the specifications that we want for Cortes style buildings and not something that you might see built elsewhere. So we are tweaking the designs a bit more for site stormwater management with green infrastructure, like rain gardens. We’d be looking at composting toilets for some of the toilets, just looking at more energy efficiency, more renewable energy on site. So, really trying to find ways to address environmental concerns creatively, like catching rainwater for irrigation. The original design called for paved roads and paved parking lots. All those surfaces create runoff and then you need a bigger stormwater catchment. Just by sticking with green infrastructure, we can manage more of that stormwater on site and then you don’t have runoff going into the lake and stuff.”
Reaching out to our MLA
Cortes Currents: “Before she was not reelected, MLA Michelle Babchuk was talking about working to try to help obtain funding for you from B. C. Housing. Have you approached our new MLA, Anna Kindy, to see if she can do anything?”
Sadhu Johnston: “We haven’t approached her yet, but we will. Obviously having a relationship with our local politicians is important.”
Starting Construction at Rainbow Ridge
“We may still engage with BC Housing on this or future phases. We’re not ruling it out, we’re just not waiting anymore. We’ve been in a holding pattern for a few years and we want to get out of that holding pattern by building the 1st, 2 or 3 buildings, which represents anywhere from 4 to 7 units this year by doing our own fundraising and using the financial resources that we’ve already gained to try to get those projects underway.”
“We are going to be looking to clear the site for development before the nesting season, so we’re kind of trying to get that done in February.”
Working with FOCI at Rainbow Ridge
Sadhu Johnston: “Bruin’s been working with FOCI on a wildlife strategy and how we might move some of the understory plants, and then also bird boxes and things that we can do to support wildlife. We’re envisioning wildlife corridors on either side of the property, so that we can still accommodate wolves and other wildlife.”
Bruin Black: “I’ve walked the site with Helen Hall, Executive Director of FOCI, looking at local biologist Sabina Leader Mense’s report, and chatting with Helen on how best to do things. She was fairly happy with the retention pond being cut from the original design because it keeps more space open for wildlife on the eastern border. We had some ideas on preserving the understory and moving them over to the areas that are going to stay green. Those are a couple examples.”
Possibility for Renewables at Rainbow Ridge
Sadhu Johnston: “We’re also doing a district energy study right now to see how we could produce renewable energy that could serve the whole site. That’s funded by the Federation of Canadian municipalities as an input to see if we can create more renewable energy on the site, in addition to energy efficient buildings. We’re looking at geothermal.”
Vacant Homes
Cortes Currents: Has there been any progress in the idea of utilizing some of Cortes Island’s vacant homes as rentals?
“We’ve talked previously about the third of the homes on the island that are more or less empty most of the year and also cabins or spare bedrooms that might be underutilized.”
Home Share Program
Sadhu Johnston: “We are still working on a homeshare program, which we’re looking to get launched by the summer. Hopefully we can get more of those underutilized bedrooms and cabins and houses into productive use on the island.”
Tiny Home Village
Cortes Currents: Is the housing society still planning to build a tiny home village on the south end of the property.
Sadhu Johnston: “We really want to get the Rainbow Ridge phase 1 underway and that’s where we’re focusing our attention, but we do still want to pursue that project. There was a motion that was approved by the Strathcona Regional District that Mark brought forward to use the SRD’s new housing service as an opportunity to explore this concept and to help fund it. So it’s something that we’re looking to pursue.”
Cortes Currents: Do you have a timeline for the tiny house project?
Sadhu Johnston: “We don’t yet, we need to sit down with the Regional District and understand what that funding program looks like, and whether those funds would be available to us.”
Cortes Island’s Aquifer
Cortes Currents: Is there any news on the Cortes Island Aquifer study?
Sadhu Johnston: “We’ve hired consultants and they’re starting to do their work. We’re doing an ecological mapping of the island currently, so the two projects will come together. The consultants will be up on Island in the spring and we’ll have a public forum and a chance for people to meet them and give input and hear about the project. So it’s moving forward.”
Cortes Trade Directory
Cortes Currents: How is the Cortes Trade Directory going?
Sadhu Johnston: “I don’t know if you’ve seen it on our website, but we’ve got a lot of professionals up there and, based on the initial analytics, people seem to be visiting it. We still get new submissions periodically. People are still adding their businesses to the directory and so far it seems to be a good resource.”
Further Online Housing Forums
Cortes Currents: How have your online housing forums worked out?
Sadhu Johnston: Great, we’ve done five or more last year and we’re going to be doing some hybrid events. So in person but also on Zoom.”
“We’re doing one in February on land sharing models. So looking at the different ways that land sharing is working on Cortes and alternative development models, like Treedom or Siskin Lane. Looking at some of those kinds of examples so people can learn worked and, if they could do them again, how they might do them a little bit differently.”
Cortes Currents: That would be interesting, especially how they would do these projects differently.
Sadhu Johnston: “I have lots of really innovative examples on Cortes and lots of people that are recognizing that it’s not really financially viable for people to buy 10 acres and build a home on a subdivided parcel. It might be that they need to share land and pursue their dreams in community.
Public Meeting For Rainbow Ridge
Do either of you have anything in addition that you want to say?
Sadhu Johnston: “On Rainbow Ridge, we are doing a public meeting on January 25th. We’re inviting people to come out and learn about our plans, the revisions that Bruins made and our schedule.”
The public meeting for Rainbow Ridge will be January 25th from 10 am to 12 pm at Mansons Hall.
Links of Interest:
- Cortes Housing Society website
- Articles about, or mentioning the Cortes Island Housing Society
- Articles about, or mentioning the SRD Housing Service
- Articles about, or mentioning, Rainbow Ridge
All uncredited photos courtesy Cortes Island Housing Society website
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