Booming Brandon faces housing crunch

As the city of Brandon, Man., celebrates its 125th anniversary, city officials are dealing with the increasing pressure on housingavailability that has accompanied recent economic growth.

Brandon'seconomic development officepresented a report to city council a month ago indicating the city is in a housing crunch. The city's population has grown by thousands in the past few years as workers fill jobs at a new meat processing plant, fuelling growth inother industries.

The rental vacancy rate in the city has hovered around 0.9 per cent for three years, the report said, adding that for apartments with three or more bedrooms, the vacancy rate was zero.

The city of 43,000 has an "immediate need" for 200 new rental units, and will need as many as 650more in the next five years, according to the report.

"That's despite significant new units being constructed," said Sandy Trudel, the city's economic development officer. "The economy is absorbing the units as fast as they're coming on stream."

Hotel room home to family of 5

The situation is all too familiar to Steve Leszkovics, who lives with his wife and three children in a Brandon hotel room.

The family has been unable to find an affordable apartment with more than two bedrooms since they moved to Brandon six months ago, Leszkovics told CBC, so they are crammed into ahotelspacewith two bedrooms separated by a curtain, a small bathroom and a bar fridge.

"Nobody sleeps properly, and you know, the kids, we don't allow their friends here because of the sheer size of it," Leszkovics said.

People who want to own their homes are also facing an uphill battle, the report suggests, with selling prices climbing more than 40 per cent in the last five years. The city will need some 1,400 new homes in the long term, with at least 300 needed now.

Population surge expected

The situation is expected to worsen in the western Manitoba city later this year, as Maple Leaf Foods prepares to add a second shift at its pork processing plant.

"There will be 400 foreign workers that will be hired by fall of 2007, and then basically by the fall of 2010 there will be a total of 900 foreign workers that have come into the community," said Trudel.

"The foreign workers that are currently at the plant are at the status now of bringing over their families."

Trudel expects about 2,000 family members to move to Brandon by 2010.

She said the city is working on initiatives to deal with the growth, such as creating an affordable housing reserve fund.