Apart from the pipeline expansion, housing is another top issue for Terry Beech, Liberal MP for Burnaby North-Seymour. And he’s been lobbying his government to invest in Burnaby, he says.
People regularly come into his riding office to talk about housing, ranging from student housing, to demovicted renters in South Burnaby, to young prospective buyers, to business owners who can’t find housing for their employees.
A site next to his constituency office on Hastings has been identified as a potential place to build non-market housing, and the details are still in the works, according to Beech.
He’s also recently spoken with the president of SFU about securing some funding for housing from the National Housing Strategy, and has been working with the Burnaby Homelessness Task Force over the past two years.
“The federal government has been out of the housing game for 25 years,” Beech said. “(The federal housing strategy) is a major down-payment … and I fully expect that both North Vancouver and Burnaby, where the problem is just as acute as it is in Vancouver, will benefit from those funds.”
Now that the strategy has been announced, he said it’s his job, and the job of the other levels of government in Burnaby, to “get creative” and identify parcels of land and find ways to create incentives for developers to build affordable housing there.
