Last week one of the final public consultation workshops of the Jasper Community Sustainability Plan (CSP) took place.

Events like this have been taking place since late last year to find out what people think should happen in Jasper over the next three decades.

One topic that inevitably comes up at discussions like this is housing. Housing, in Jasper, is a big problem, as many know. Renters struggle to find a place to rest their heads, and buyers are blown away by the sky-high prices of homes.

This is one of the most frustrating things about Jasper for some people.

Yet, because the last CSP workshop was conveniently scheduled as an eight-hour event on a weekday, the voices of the people who may have spoken out about such a frustration were not heard.

This event was blatantly designed to attract certain residents, such as the business owners, retirees and homemakers, not the young adults working away for an hourly wage to afford their rent and keep their heads afloat in this town – the people who will still be around when the sustainability plan has run its course.

Who really has the time to take a full day off in the middle of the week? And those who do have the day off likely don’t want to dedicate it to a day of group talks about goals that have been discussed to death.

Fortunately, there were about 50 participants eager to speak on everyone else’s behalf.

According to reports, some workshop participants expressed concern that as the baby boomers retire, they won’t be able to find smaller houses to move in to after their kids have flown the coop. 

Are you serious? Does anyone really think that’s this town’s most significant housing concern?

As an associate pointed out, there are a number of people in this town who will never own a home here – they will stay and keep paying rent.

That means that while the baby boomers are fretting over their too-large homes, other residents will work away for years and years and come out with little to show for it. 

They won’t have a home to leave to their children, because they couldn’t come up with the down payment for a $400,000 trailer while they were paying $600 a month for a room in a shared basement apartment.

If the participants attending these sustainability planning workshops were smart, they would consider the needs of the people who will keep this town running in 30 years. In fact, that’s what the process is all about – looking ahead to the future. 

Because just as easy as it is for retirees to pout over being unable to downsize, the young people supporting this place could pack their bags and buy a place down the road somewhere.

Let’s get our heads on straight and think about who we’re asking when attempting to make Jasper a sustainable community.