We are working on a draft “Affordable Housing Agreement” which will be registered on title, to ensure that future home sales will remain in an affordable price range. This will be refined in consultation with the Islands Trust legal team.
Dragonfly Commons is now a Not-For-Profit Society
In September, we registered ourselves as a not-for-profit society called Dragonfly Commons Housing Society. This was another essential step along the way and was a requirement from BC Housing. In November, the Society was able to apply and receive a CMHC Seed Funding Loan at zero-interest to carry on with the pre-development costs. We are proud that so far we have only spent $30,000 in pre-development (site planning, home designs, Riparian Area reports, surveying, drainage plan, etc). This has all been covered by the CMHC Seed Funding Grant. Much of the work going on behind the scenes is done by Fernando and Tami and the steering committee, as volunteers, instead of paying consultants. This in an effort to keep the bottom line (i.e. the home prices) as low as possible.
Well Licence
We are working on our licence for the well that we drilled last year. Because there was a new Water Act in 2016, things are bogged down in the FLNRO offices. We submitted our application for the new groundwater licence in August and were not assigned a Water Officer until December 2017. She has been very helpful in working through some details and it is now in the “pipeline”, hopefully we will receive it in 3-6 months.
Subdivision referrals starting
Similar to the rezoning process, the Province (MOTI) sends out our subdivision request to a number of agencies. This in fact duplicates a number of the referrals, but we have been told there is no way to “batch” the referrals together. We have heard back from some agencies already. Within this process, BC Hydro has contacted us and we will be working with them to design the hydro service to the development.