Editor: Kudos and thank you to Councillor Ed Russell for voting against the application for a 53-room Super 8 Hotel on Bow Valley Trail in Canmore at the Aug. 17 Canmore Planning Commission meeting. The other three voting members present at the CPC meeting approved the application, which will next be presented to Canmore town council.
Councillor Russell did not support this application because of the lack of staff housing. The proposal only includes a one-bedroom staff housing suite for the manager. As the highest paid employee, he or she would be most likely able to afford accommodation in Canmore. Our town often talks of “affordable housing,” but we seem to forget that affordability has two sides to it; the cost of rents and the wages earned to afford a rental.
Why would this hotel not include staff housing for their future lower paid employees? Will this hotel’s investors expect the Town to fund and provide the staff housing for their employees in the future?
The residents of Canmore reside in their homes or in rental accommodation, not in hotels. The taxpayers of Canmore should not be expected to pay for housing for employees of this proposed new hotel.
The hotel investors should factor in the cost to build staff housing into their investment proposal. If, when taking into account the cost of staff housing, the investment does not deliver the desired return on investment, then they should not build the hotel: it is a bad investment decision.
Don’t come back to the Town in a year’s time expecting taxpayers to pay and provide staff housing for your employees.
The hotel investors may say they are following the present Canmore rules, which only require hotels to provide employee housing if they have 100 rooms or more. This rule does not make sense to me. It is time to change it. Most hotels in Canmore have less than 100 rooms.
Hotels create low-wage jobs. At the proposed $13.60 minimum wage for 2017, the weekly wage for a 40-hour week will be $544. At this wage, the newly built “affordable” McArthur Place’s one-bedroom apartment will not be affordable to such hotel employees. Things (including rents) are only affordable if one earns enough to be able to pay for them.
It is time to change the staff housing rules for proposed hotel developments and for our council to live up to its frequently stated commitment to affordable housing.
Rather than having the Town and CCHC (which means us taxpayers) subsidize housing for these low-paid employees, their employer should pay livable wages and/or provide them with staff housing.
Pierre Lambert,
Canmore
