Preliminary inquiries being made about affordable housing in the Yellowhead region by the Evergreen Foundation has town council concerned about the direction the regional body may be taking in the future.

Councillor Gloria Kongsrud brought the Foundation’s initial research about the needs and prospects for affordable housing to council’s attention at the end of Tuesday’s regular meeting. Kongsrud cited a letter including unit estimates and other figures for other communities in the region, including Grande Cache and Hinton.

“They’re writing about 30 units for both places and also something for Edson. So my question for them was; where is Jasper’s name on this list?”

Kongsrud is a Jasper representative on the Foundation, which has been responsible for developing assisted living facilities in various communities in the area. The foundation requesitions money from its constituent municipalities to provide part of the funding for the construction of these facilities and for their upkeep. Kongsrud is not keen on the concept of Jasper beginning to support affordable housing units in other centres when there are serious concerns about similar facilities on a local level.

“I don’t want to be requesitioned to look after affordable housing in Grande Cache,” she said. “I don’t think that is Jasper’s responsibility.”

The Evergreen Foundation’s efforts  are still at the very earliest stages, Kongsrud was quick to emphasize to her fellow councillors. However, the need is clearly acute in nearby communities such as Hinton, where a work camp is currently housing close to 3,000 oilpatch workers, according to Kongsrud. The camp dwellers have expressed a desire to bring their families to the region but there is simply no room at this time, she said.

If the prospect of a tent city nearly the size of Jasper was not impressive enough, Verne Balding, Jasper’s director of corporate and legislative services, said that officials in Hinton are anticipating the camp population on the outskirts of their town to treble within the next six months.

This, combined with similar population pressure in communities like Edson and Grande Cache, is cause for concern, said Mayor Richard Ireland.

“I’m worried that we are the last community to get an assisted living facility,” he said. “Now that it’s going towards affordable housing, you can bet that we won’t be at the top of that list.”

Councillor Mike Day expressed further concern about the regional definition of eligibility for affordable housing in an area with wildly divergent salaries. Day worries that if oilpatch workers in Hinton and elsewhere in the Yellowhead can be considered as candidates for support while earning in the range of $40,000 to $50,000 per year, it will be very difficult to create a feasible situation in the near to medium term for service industry workers in Jasper that are earning some $20,000 per annum less.

Any physical construction of housing complexes would be partially covered by grant funding as part of the Canada-Alberta Affordable Housing Agreement. In 2005, each level of government involved pledged $31.5 million dollars for affordable housing developments in the province. There are no limitations for age or disability for housing units supported by the grant money.

Keith Shepherd, town director of financial services, warned councillors to be watchful for the possibility that the Evergreen Foundation could take on the regional administration of the federal-provincial monies. Should this occur, it might become a matter of “getting on board or missing out,” as Shepherd put it. He noted that the government has made such arrangements in the past for other projects, transferring responsibility for provincial and federal dollars to local or regional groups.

In the end, Ireland expressed concern that this was the first he’d heard of a Foundation plan for affordable housing. “I want some more answers,” he said.