Habitat For Humanity Gets No Immediate Break from Council
Monday, March 26, 2012 @ 6:13 PM
Prince George, B.C. – No break for Habitat for Humanity.
The organization builds homes for the less fortunate, a project made possible through donations and sweat equity.
Habitat for Humanity is getting set to start construction on its 7th home in Prince George, but asked the City to waive the fees and charges associated with the construction. Habitat for Humanity submitted an application for a social grant, but did not meet the requirements so it did not get a grant.
Councillor Murry Krause wondered aloud about the timing of the request as this is already the end of March and construction is slated for May. He reminded all that when Council had supported Habitat for Humanity in the past, those dollars came from the Council contingency fund, but that fund has been cut dramatically.
Habitat has already incurred $13,477.00 in fees for permits and development costs.
While Councillors expressed support for the work Habitat does, members expressed a loss at how Council can find dollars to assist the group.
This matter and a similar request from the Metis Housing Association have been referred to Administration to be included in future discussions about a Housing Strategy for the City.
Comments
“Asked the City to waive the fees and charges associated with the construction”
What exactly would those be? Does council actually need to “find dollars” or is it just a case of not charging them? Quite often the costs associated with processing applications and stuff like that are fixed, so it’s not like council is out of pocket if they waived them.
There is no real cost. The people who do the processing are already working for the city. This is just a way of recovering costs to a developer but for a charity cause such as this the city should just absorb the cost.
“Habitat has already incurred $13,477.00 in fees for permits and development costs.”
Fees is one thing, development costs are another. I do not know what the development costs are or who did the work associated with development costs. I assume that the lot required services to be brought to it from the street, because in a new subdivision such services would already be there for the purchaser of the property. The lack of those services should be reflected in the value of the property – it should cost less than one that is serviced.
I have not looked at the request to see if this type of detail is broken out.
As far as fees go, if 5% of the construction in PG would have access to similar waivers, then the costs of fees would have to go up by that amount to reflect the loss of revenue.
Were fees waived for the Friendship Lodge? How about the BC housing project on 6th Avenue? Churches? … A comprehensive list would have to be created in order to be equitable.
I am not saying that this project should not get some sort of reduction. What I am saying is that if they do, then others should get it as well.
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