Moosomin passes incentive plan
$30,000 cash incentive for new housing units:
August 6, 2024, 10:31 am
Kevin Weedmark
Building in Moosomin pays. Literally.
Develop a new housing unit in Moosomin—a home, an RTM, a modular home, a mobile home ,a basement suite, a garage suite, a townhome, or a backyard suite—and the town will pay you $30,000 once an occupancy permit is issued.
Build an apartment building, condo building, or multi-family housing development and the town will pay you $30,000 for the first door and $8,000 for each additional door.
The incentive plan applies to any residential building permit issued since August 21 of last year. The cost of the program is covered by a $1 million federal Housing Accelerator Fund. Moosomin is one of only a handful of communities on the Prairies to be approved for grants under the Housing Accelerator Fund. Moosomin is receiving $992,000 of funding. The town of Outlook and the City of Humboldt are the only two other municipalities in Saskatchewan to have Housing Accelerator funding announced last week.
Councillor Murray Gray, the chair of Moosomin’s Economic Development Committee, said he believes that the incentive plan will have an impact on residential development.
“We are trying to have an impactful incentive program that will encourage development,” Gray said. “The cheque up front to developers, as opposed to a tax incentive, is something that was outside the box that was suggested by the Community Builders Alliance and will be very impactful, I think, in order to grow our residential housing quickly.”
He said he believes the goal of the program, to add 43 new housing units in Moosomin, will be met quickly.
“I suspect that we will reach our goal of 43 within one year. That’s my estimate. We’ll reach out to some of the developers who we’ve been talking to over the years and let them know that we have the new incentive plan and I think things will happen fairly quickly from there. I’m confident that things will happen fairly quickly.”
Gray said he believes the incentive plan will be attractive to developers.
“I think that developers will be more excited about something that’s different than what everybody else does,” he said. “We’re trying to set ourselves apart from Brandon or another small town. I think that it’s just unique enough that it’ll catch their attention and I think that it’s awesome that we’re already situated to grow without this.
“I don’t think a developer would be as interested if we were a stagnant town and then all of a sudden you threw the money at them. We have a very positive economy growing and growth going on and this on top of it just points to the fact that this is a great place to invest in residential.
“We have had employers say they have trouble bringing people in because there isn’t enough housing. We’ve had people say they would move here if they could have housing. So we know there’s demand, we just have to increase the supply, and this is one way to do it.”
He said housing is an issue in the community because of strong economic growth.
“We need more housing because of the fact that we have grown without any additional homes. We have very strong immigration into our community with our healthcare and our new businesses that we have. We have new people in the community but we haven’t added any new doors in a long, long time so I think that pressure is catching up to us. So we need to get caught back up and hopefully keep the momentum going, going forward.”
What does he credit for getting the $1 million federal grant?
“Working together and collaboration 100 per cent,” he said. “Between the CBA, Economic Development and the town—everybody working together for a common goal. Everybody sees that it’s needed in order to add housing and so hopefully we can fulfill that need.”
He said addressing the housing issue addresses one of the barriers to growth.
“Adding housing is the next phase in our growth plans for sure,” he said.
“Also keep in mind that we have a water treatment plant opening in the meantime as well. So over the next year we’ll have that completed and it’s made to accommodate growth up to 4,600 people. The only limitation to that is storage so you could add more storage to service more homes. We can make more water than that, it’s just the storage that limits us to that—which we didn’t change the storage. We also have the daycare in the planning stages, and those 90 new daycare spots will fill a need. When people can find a home and find daycare, it’ll be a lot easier to move here.”
What does he see as the future for Moosomin?
“Onward and upward,” he says. “The future is bright and all of these things—all of these little wins along the way are part of the puzzle in order to achieve big things as a community.”
“Here in Saskatchewan and across the country, we’re tackling the housing crisis by investing in affordable housing and partnering with local communities to make construction easier. By working together, we’re making sure every Canadian has an affordable place they can call home.”
—The Honourable Dan Vandal, Minister of Northern Affairs and Minister responsible for PrairiesCan and CanNor
