MLA Conroy Newsletter: Affordable housing and WorkSafe BC
By Katrine Conroy
Dear Neighbours, Friends and Community Members,
We know people in B.C. are worried about finding housing they can afford: from students and young adults moving away from home, to families looking to find more space, to seniors thinking about downsizing, and everyone in between. That’s why we’re working to protect the affordable housing we do have, and reduce the barriers to create more housing throughout the province.
Recently, we announced a new fund to help protect renters and keep affordable rental spaces out of the hands of real estate speculators and profiteers. We’re investing $500-million in the Rental Protection Fund, to allow community non-profits to purchase older buildings and keep people housed and prevent speculators from buying these properties and evicting tenants or raising rents. Learn more about it here!
Often when new housing projects are in the early stages they can be slowed down by the permitting process. This week we shared our new Permitting Strategy for Housing, to streamline this process and create a single-application approach, rather than requiring multiple applications to different government bodies. The current approach isn’t working for people, so we’re working to fix it. Find out more about these changes here.
B.C. is a beautiful and desirable place, and we want people to be able to live here, move here and stay here without having to worry about how they will afford a place to live. As your provincial representative, I will keep working for you to protect the existing affordable housing in our community, and create more of it.
My community office is open Monday to Thursday 10-3pm. Please call or email in advance to let Angelika and Sarah know when you are planning to come in so they can be ready in advance to assist you. If you have any questions or concerns about any provincial issue, or need assistance with a provincial body, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re here to help. My office can be reached at 250-304-2783 or Katrine.Conroy.MLA@leg.bc.ca.
Sincerely,
Katrine Conroy
MLA Kootenay West
Related information:
New jobs fund will support employment, resilient economies
We are working to create more good-paying jobs for people in rural British Columbia with the $90 million BC Manufacturing Jobs Fund. This investment will help diversify local economies, promote value-added innovation in the forestry sector, and create thousands of good-paying jobs for people.
WorkSafeBC is seeking participants for Young Worker Dialogue Session
As you may know, WorkSafeBC regularly engages with young workers, and the employers who hire them, to ensure these workers’ voices are heard when it comes to workplace health and safety.
WorkSafeBC seeks feedback from young workers in order to better understand their attitudes and motivations around workplace health and safety and to ensure important safety messages resonate with this target group.
Online dialogue session
WorkSafeBC is recruiting young workers aged 18–24 to participate in an online dialogue session. The session will gather feedback from participants on WorkSafeBC’s current outreach and engagement initiatives and solicit their ideas on new ways WorkSafeBC can connect with young workers on workplace health and safety.
How it works
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Recruitment is happening in January 2023, and the online dialogue session will take place in February 2023.
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Selected participants will receive a $150 honorarium for participating in and completing a two-hour online dialogue session.
