Monday - Sept. 16, 2024 - The Current named Jack Webster Award finalist

☀ High 23C

Good morning!

We’ve gotten quite a few responses to our call out for this month’s FVC Perspectives on good news health care stories—thank you all so much for sharing! (If you haven’t yet, you can do so here.)

In the spirit of good health care, I’m going to share a little shoutout to my sister Samantha, who is a nurse at Royal Columbian Hospital. She graduated nursing school during the pandemic and has been a rock star on her floor ever since. Now, she’s studying at UBC to become a nurse practitioner (i.e. the fanciest of nurses).

She has worked through thin, and thin, and more thin, and deserves the best start to her graduate degree and the rest of her career. Yay Sam!

– Grace

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Traffic & Weather

🌤 Local forecast: Langley | Chilliwack | Abbotsford | Hope (We have had to temporarily change our forecast links to the Weather Network due to a technical error.)

NEWS

Six times as many Chilliwack residents waiting for affordable housing than in 2016

Over the last eight years, Chilliwack has welcomed nearly 18,000 more residents. But as Chilliwack’s population has grown by a whopping 20%, the number of people waiting for affordable housing has increased much, much faster.

Chilliwack’s mayor says that needs to change, and the province needs to get started building more affordable housing projects.

In 2016, Chilliwack had roughly 50 people on the BC Housing Registry, a list of people waiting for subsidized affordable housing. As of March 2024, there were 296 people on the list—a six-fold increase in less than a decade. And that doesn’t include the dozens of people at risk of homelessness who have applied for supportive housing.

With the rapid increase in the cost of housing, even the cheapest market rental homes are now stretching the wallets of low-income people. Affordable housing now largely depends on the availability of provincial subsidies. But recently, the province has pushed municipalities to participate as well.

Under the Housing Supply Act, the province has given cities like Vancouver, Abbotsford, Langley, and Chilliwack targets for how many new units they must get built over the next five years. The targets also include a certain number of affordable homes.

Chilliwack Mayor Ken Popove said the province needs to realize that building new affordable housing is its job.

“What really pisses me off [is] they keep pushing all these [housing] targets on us, and in those targets are social housing, but they can't even get their crap together,” Popove said about the province.

• Today, Grace looks at Chilliwack’s affordable housing challenges, and talks to Popove about what he thinks the city and the province need to do to fix the problem.

Related

Need to Know

🔥 Lytton residents may never know what caused the wildfire that destroyed their community after an RCMP investigation failed to find the cause [The Tyee]

🚓 Driver fatigue may have been a factor in the Agassiz crash that killed a family of three, RCMP say [Agassiz Harrison Observer]

🍴 A huge new Indian restaurant is opening in Abbotsford [Dished]

💰 Ottawa is giving $100M over four years to support the Canadian Foodgrains Bank in its effort to end global hunger; the funding was announced at a press conference in Abbotsford last week [Fraser Valley Today]

👉 A man who fell into the Fraser River near Lillooet has not yet been found [Castanet]

💧 The Township of Langley wants more than $15 million in disaster preparedness funds to updated its sewer and water systems [Langley Advance Times]

🚔 Mission Mounties say vandals tampered with natural gas lines, causing two leaks on Sept. 8 [CTV] / A gas leak Sunday caused authorities to warn downtown residents to shelter in place; the leak has since been fixed [Mission Record]

🥇 A Mission swimmer brought home seven gold medals from the provincial championships this year [Mission Record]

🏗 A massive new feed mill has opened in central Chilliwack [FarmNews Now]

🦇 A multi-year project to protect local bats from white nose syndrome is one of 178 conservation projects being funded by the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation this year [Chilliwack Progress]

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The Agenda

Black Press coverage gets finalist nod

The Current is again a finalist for BC’s most prestigious journalism prize.

Tyler Olsen’s coverage of the financial collapse of Black Press has been named a finalist in the Excellence in Business Reporting category at the Jack Webster Awards. At the heart of the coverage is The Current’s story “How an Ohio newspaper sank a BC publishing empire.” You can read that story here.

The other finalists in our category are friends of The Current. The Tyee and The Climate Disaster Project have been recognized for their story on the deteriorating conditions faced by tree planters. And The Narwhal and The Globe and Mail were named finalist for their coverage of BC’s insufficient mine cleanup funding.

Three other stories with Fraser Valley connections were named finalists (and deserve to be read).

Postmedia's Fraser Valley reporter, Glenda Luymes, has also been named a finalist for a story on how an Abbotsford man has been convicted 21 times for drunk driving, and the challenge in totally removing impaired people from the roads. Cullen Crozier and Kenneth Jackson from the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network were recognized for their story on Peters First Nation and how it illegally denied band membership to qualified people. (We spoke to Kenneth in April about his coverage for our weekly Insider newsletter. Members can read that conversation here.) And Katie Hyslop and Jen St. Denis are finalists for a story on an audit that exposed major failures in the Ministry of Children and Family Development’s oversight in the Fraser Valley.

You can find the full list of finalists, along with links to the stories, here. The winners will be announced at an event in late October. Win or lose, Tyler will get a free meal.

Meanwhile, the new owners of Black Press have continued to seek ways to cut costs. In June, the Coast Mountain News, a twice-weekly newspaper based in Bella Coola, quietly stopped publishing. Delivery has also ceased in rural communities in the Cariboo. Those rural delivery changes follow similar moves in the Fraser Valley.

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🤝 Now hiring

• Executive director at The Reach Gallery Museum in Abbotsford

• Medical office assistant and receptionist at the Chilliwack Urgent Primary Care Centre

• Library learning commons teacher at Eugene Reimer Middle School in Abbotsford

• Restaurant manager at Egg Bomb Café in Langley

• Museum assistant at the Mission Museum

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🗓 Things to do

SkyTrain seniors: Langley Seniors in Action will be welcoming a guest speaker from the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain Project at its Wednesday, Sept. 18 Hub meeting. The meeting will be held at the Langley Senior Resources Society at 20605-51B Ave., from 10am-12pm. For details email [email protected].

Volunteer day: The Fraser Valley Conservancy and the City of Abbotsford co-host a free presentation on the benefits of volunteering on Wednesday Sept. 18 starting at 6pm. Details online.

Art opening: The Chilliwack Visual Artists Association hosts its new exhibition Canada, Eh? from Wednesday, Sept. 18 to Saturday, Oct. 19. An opening reception will be held at the O'Connor Group Art Gallery on Saturday, Sept. 21 from 1 to 3pm. Details online.

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Catch up

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