Vernon may have hit a 12-year high in housing starts, but the city’s population grew at its usual rate of 1.6 per cent in 2006.According to B.C. Statistics, 557 people moved to the city last year bringing the population to an estimated 36,785. But in 2006 there were 517 new homes built in Vernon, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
.jpg)
The reason Vernon seems to be gaining as many new houses as people is that an increasing number of residences are being used solely as secondary homes, said city planning manager Jeremy Kinch. “People are either buying property as an investment, buying in anticipation of retirement or buying a recreational property,” he said. “It’s difficult to determine at any one time how many there are.”The city studies water use patterns to find out which homes are empty for long periods of the year, and those patterns indicate there are at least 350 seasonal homes in Vernon. However, Kinch said that the city’s estimate is likely on the low side. The difficulty of guessing how many seasonal citizens there are makes it harder to ensure the water supply, road networks and transit can handle sudden surges in extra traffic. “Certainly it’s one of the things we need to address as part of the (Official Community Plan),” he said. “Even though they’re using services certain times of the year they’re still contributing to peak usage of water, roads . . .”Not including any growth in secondary homeownership, the city is expecting the population to rise at about 1.36 per cent per year bringing the city’s population to 44,000 a decade from now and 50,000 by 2026.“We will have to make decisions about where these people are going to live,” Kinch said. “We may be looking at high density (residential development) like Penticton is.
No comments:
Post a Comment