After three years of planning, more than $4 million of capital raising and a year (and counting) of construction, MPL Place, the affordable housing community project, is now officially home for just over forty Jasperites.

According to Nadine LeJeune, Manager at MPL’s Amethyst Lodge and organizer of MPL’s efforts to move people into the new building, the building is now full. There are currently 10 to 15 people on a waiting list, but over the next several weeks, about 42 individuals will be setting up shop in the new apartment building.

The residents of the new building are varied. A mother and child, the elderly, friends in their twenties who have decided to move in together and recent immigrants to Canada are all setting up home in the building.

Occupancy is based on wages, as residents have a $36,000 threshold.

“It’s a pretty broad swathe of people,” said LeJeune.

“One of the surprising things for me is just the finishing touches... Looks like quality materials were used. The doors seem really solid, things like that,” said Stephen Eidt, a resident at the building. He said, overall, his home was a good deal. “It almost makes you feel sorry for rich people.”

LeJeune said that the first weekend went smoothly. In the build up to the move, there were a few minor snafus to overcome: the doors of some of the refrigerators were put on backwards, some of the plumbing sprung leaks and the laundry machines shipped with incorrect parts and made the cost of doing a full load over a dollar cheaper than planned.

LeJeune also said the parking lot for the building should be completed by the end of May, along with much of the landscaping work around the building.

Keith Shepherd, Manager of the Jasper Community Housing Corporation, said that overall, the process of approving people for MPL Place went smoothly. Most people who applied checked out as earning incomes below the limit and no one tried to scam their way in.

“It’s been a learning process for me, in terms of dealing with the provincial grant and some of its requirements... but there have been no major headaches,” said Shepherd.

“The municipality is extremely pleased with the MPL Place partnership and the additions it makes to affordable housing inventories in the community. I’m confident that council would look favourably on a similar partnership in the future were an opportunity to arise,” said Verne Balding, director of corporate and legislative services for the town, in an email.

The costs of the building involved a complex relationship between the province of Alberta, the town of Jasper and MPL. The building was paid for through a $3.2 million dollar grant from the province to the municipality of Jasper, who then transferred the money to MPL. MPL also put forward $1.37 million into the project and supplied the land. They will also operate the building and undertook it’s construction and development. All leases signed at the building are signed by MPL and cheques made out by rent payers ($445 per month, which includes water and heat but not electricity) are made to MPL.

“This is a tremendously important announcement for the community,” said Mayor Richard Ireland in 2008. “Forty-two one-bedroom affordable housing units will be a significant step toward meeting the community housing needs set out in the 2002 Jasper Housing Study.”