Chiefs, housing managers and people from isolated communities are meeting in Winnipeg this week to take a fresh look at the housing problem.
It’s the third annual conference for the Frontier Foundation which aims to promote forestry and housing as economic drivers for communities.
Laurel Gardiner is the director of the group in Manitoba.
She says using local timber makes sense on a number of levels:
“These communities live in the bush so the more you can mobilize those natural resources into their own housing the less reliant they are on winter roads and those southern suppliers plus you’re creating jobs and income in the community.”
The conference is also looking at different business-models communities can adopt to make the approach work.
This can vary from band-owned businesses to different types of cooperatives.
A manager on the Beardy’s Okemasis First Nation agrees something has to be done to improve housing conditions for residents.
Everett Gamble looks after housing on the reserve and is also the director of public works.
For the past few years he has taken in different conferences on housing, and says the band recently helped create the Island Forestry Group, a joint partnership involving themselves and six other bands.
He says they eventually want to use their (Beardy’s) forestry allocation to mill timber for stick-frame houses.
Eventually this will create more houses for residents:
“Totally harvest the whole bush. That way you utilize everything, the stumps and all the other material that can’t be used for building homes and use it in alternative ways to power or to heat homes…use it as a combustible material for boiler systems that are outside.”
Gamble says some of the barriers to overcome include CMHC housing rules and provincial building code regulations.
He believes these can be overcome however, they just need a little help from the government in cutting through the red-tape and acquiring outside partners.
He knows there are barriers to overcome before the dream becomes a reality, but he feels that by using the resources around them it could pave the way for a brighter future for a lot of families.