Housing is an age old issue in Jasper.
It’s an issue for newcomers to town, looking for their first apartment, and it’s an issue for those who are trying to find a family home, having already spent years living in basement suites and bachelor apartments.
No matter what stage in the housing market you’re in, the pickings are slim—that’s if they exist at all.
Because of that severe lack of housing, Jasper faces all kinds of auxiliary issues, like finding workers to staff the town’s businesses. Without accommodations to house them, people often come to town, find a job and then pack up and leave again when they can’t find a home.
With “help wanted” signs in nearly every storefront window on Patricia Street, it’s hard to ignore the role Jasper’s zero per cent rental vacancy plays in attracting and keeping people in town.
Although it’s easy to point fingers at the moratorium on temporary foreign workers as the reason we’re short staffed around town, it’s important to note that last summer we saw similar labour shortages across the community.
So, it’s with a sigh of relief that we embrace the proposal for transitional workers accommodation in the Jasper Legion building.
The idea, put forth by Mark Howe and Marc Chalifoux, is to provide newcomers with housing for five days as they look for work, and for a period of time after they’ve found a job, so they have somewhere to lay their heads as they search for a permanent home.
Although the space won’t provide permanent lodging for new workers—and there likely won’t be a lot of options for those workers once they leave the transitional accommodation—at least they’ll have a jumping off point.
They’ll have a place to store their bags while they hit the pavement, and place to return to following their first day of work.
They’ll have a home base. And from that home base, they have the opportunity to get to know the community, put out feelers and connect with possible roommates and landlords.
It’s not the perfect solution to Jasper’s housing crisis, but it is a temporary first step that has the potential to alleviate, to some extent, the community’s persistent labour shortage.
