Cumberland adopts village-owned rental policy

This house at 3249 First Street in Cumberland was purchased for $600,000 by the village as market rental housing for new recruits to the village’s staff and on-call firefighters after the village identified a lack of housing as a barrier to recruitment efforts. Photo: Google Streetview.

The Village of Cumberland is looking to attract new staff to the village, including on-call firefighters, with the purchase of a three-bedroom house with an attached studio suite.

Purchased in May for $600,000 with money from the provincial Growing Communities Fund, the village has been working over the summer to get the building ready for new village staff.

At its meeting on Monday, council approved an additional expenditure of $23,000, of which $8,000 is from projected market rental income, for maintenance and repairs of the property.

The village council also approved a new village-owned residential rental properties policy that outlines who will qualify for the housing.

The policy states that finding housing is a “significant barrier” to recruiting new village staff, who will get top priority when the rental units are available.

If no new village staff recruits want to rent the house, the units will then be available to any member of the public, including current village staff.

Councillor Neil Borecky raised the possibility of extending the policy to doctors and nurses in the future but did not propose an amendment to the policy at this week’s meeting.

“If we're not renting immediately to new recruits, and I'm not sure what the demand for that is right off the bat, that we consider attracting physicians to the Comox Valley,” he said. “There's also a nursing pool as well, that comes through and who are on shift here temporarily, that we might look into.”

Mayor Vickey Brown says that expanding the policy beyond new village staff would require additional work be done first.

“The nurse would have to work here and Cumberland and all that kind of stuff,” she said.

Councillor Jesse Ketler says that with only two units of housing she’s not worried about a lack of demand by village staff.

“We’ll have more demand within our own organization than we have supply,” she said.

The housing will be rented at market rates and be run by a property management company hired by the village.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.