Whitehorse – Members of The Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition (YAPC) are excited to be launching an update of A Home for Everyone: A Housing Action Plan for Whitehorse. Published ten years ago, A Home for Everyone outlined the gaps, barriers and recommendations to achieving housing for everyone in Whitehorse.
“In 2011, YAPC called on all levels of government and the community to seriously examine ways to ensure a variety of housing options were available to citizens of Whitehorse,” says Charlotte Hrenchuk, co-chair of YAPC. “It was an attempt to highlight what we saw as a crisis at the time with a focus on solutions provided by policy makers, contractors, landlords, service providers and people with lived experience.”
Surveys and focus groups are the main tools for providing input to the current project. A Housing Inventory is also being developed to help compare the available housing stock from 2011 to 2021. The housing continuum has been defined from emergency shelters to affordable home ownership. Revamping A Home for Everyone is meant to support the Housing Action Plan released by the Yukon Housing Corporation in 2015 as well as the Association of Yukon Communities in their current work collecting data in municipalities.
“Housing was one of the main issues that came up during the recent territorial election,” says Kristina Craig, Executive Director. “The more information we can gather, the better the policies, incentives, investments and solutions we can implement as a community. People are really struggling and if seen as a priority, solutions can be found.”
Information will be sent to every household in Whitehorse this week with a deadline of Friday, May 7th to complete the survey. Surveys can be picked up at Well Read Books, the Whitehorse Public Library and YAPC’s office at 509 Hanson Street. Surveys can also be completed online. A final report including recommendations will be released in June.
Update, May 7: The deadline to complete the survey has been extended to Tuesday, May 11.
Kristina Craig, Executive Director – (867) 334-9318
Charlotte Hrenchuk, Co-Chair – (867) 633-3816
Brendan Irish – Researcher – (867) 334-0302