City of Cranbrook council last week approved the creation of two Mayor’s Task Forces, one on homelessness and a second on housing.

The term “Mayor’s Task Force” is to differentiate from the typical ongoing “Council Committee” that has been used in the past. The “Mayor’s Task Force” structure is intended to be a very small and select group, outlined a report to council from chief administrative officer (CAO) Mark Fercho.

The homelessness task force will be a cross-sector group of community leaders appointed to identify four to five priority actions to address homelessness and its secondary consequences in Cranbrook.

This will be an action-oriented and time-limited team that brings the identified actions into being in an effective and timely way.

Examples of possible target areas to address would be: access to sufficient hygiene, and creating programs to prepare individuals living rough move into the housing continuum.

The Task Force will focus on direct actions that provide quantifiable outcomes to decrease the homeless and poverty issues in our community.

The housing task force will be a small group of local practitioners and experts in the field of housing to determine the best path forward for the city to boost all types of housing development (the full housing spectrum from supportive and low income, to missing middle, to market) in Cranbrook.

Examples or opportunities at play at this time include: how to coordinate an application and action for available housing grants such as the current BC Housing (for worker housing as was recently approved for Fernie for childcare workers in concert with a childcare space application that was separate, this grant may be for low income senior housing recently identified as a need in Cranbrook), Fercho reported.

“This action-oriented and time-limited team would be tasked as a priority to determine the best delivery model for the “missing middle” housing in Cranbrook, such as partnerships with other non-profit or local government entities in the area, consider models of housing authority or housing corporations either as the city only, or in a regional scale, and other options,” the city CAO explained.

This group could also work with the city on maximizing development processes and use of city land for recommendations to council as well.

The intent of the Task Force is to bring a small group of experts together in each field, develop achievable goals and recommendations to act on and to bring to council for city consideration. The terms of reference, objectives, and other details will be brought back to council once these task force members are appointed by the Mayor by each of them respectively.

Once the Mayor has made the selection of the members on each of these task forces, the terms of reference and specific objectives to be achieved will be approve by council. The objective is to begin work immediately.

City administration and council have discussed the current and potential new committees of council and council appointments serving functions in the city in past meetings. The most recent discussion was on September 6.

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