Two years to build 5,218 homes in Prince George, council hears

A new interim housing needs report for the City of Prince George not only lays out development goals for the municipality but local developers as well, city staff said at the Monday, Dec. 2 council meeting.

The interim report presented at that meeting says Prince George needs 5,218 more housing units built by 2026 and 12,503 by 2041. Prince George saw 319 housing starts in 2023 and 373 in 2022, according to a city staff report from last January.

This new report was prepared to meet the city’s obligations under the province’s Local Government Act, which mandates that municipalities complete an interim housing report by Jan. 1, 2025, and a full report by Dec. 31, 2028.

Those figures are further broken down into categories.

By 2026, 3,652 housing units are needed to meet anticipated population growth, 566 are needed as a buffer, 496 are needed for people experiencing homelessness, 306 are needed for the city’s core housing requirements, 175 are needed for those currently unable to form a separate household and 21 are needed to maintain a city-wide vacancy rate of three per cent.

By 2041 7,234 units are needed for population growth, 2,265 are needed as a buffer, 995 are needed for people experiencing homelessness, 1,224 are needed for the city’s core housing requirements, 699 are needed for those unable to form a separate household and 95 are needed to maintain the three per cent vacancy rate.

Deanna Wasnik, the city’s director of planning and development, said at the meeting that there’s a difference between the figures identified in the housing needs report and the mandated housing targets put in place by the provincial government for both figures and timelines.

She said the report was first completed in 2021 and last updated in 2022 before this year’s revision.

The housing needs report was described as a big picture goal — nice to achieve but not mandatory like the province’s housing target order. In other words, the province’s target is a minimum amount Prince George must achieve while the figure in the report is aspirational.

Wasnik added that the interim report lays out what the city is doing to achieve both the targets laid out in the report and in the province’s target.

Should immigration numbers drop in future years, Wasnik said that could affect the number of homes the report has predicted Prince George needs.

Deklan Corstanje, the city’s manager of economic development, said the 2026 number is alarming because it does not include the net figure of units the city has been building.

In late October, the federal government announced its intention to pause Canada’s population growth between 2025 and 2027 by limiting the number of temporary residents in the country.

Mayor Simon Yu said one of the reasons he recently joined a Modular BC mayors’ task force was to help find new ways to boost the city’s housing supply.