From housing prices to the push for street performers, laws governing development and expansion are an inescapable and omnipresent part of life in Jasper. Looking at Land Use provides an in-depth exploration of how those laws impact the lives of the park鈥檚 citizens, business owners and government鈥攗ntangling the complexities of the issues and exploring what they mean for Jasper as it heads into the future.
Part three: The housing crunch
Finding a home in a town that can't grow
When Tony Pasolli鈥檚 mother died in 2009 she left him and his sisters the family home.
The siblings had grown up in Jasper, and even though as adults they had all moved away, they often returned to visit.
They wanted to keep the house they grew up in, so they decided to rent it out to local residents, keeping the basement suite empty so they could have a place to stay when they came back to town.
The problem, they would quickly learn, is that they were breaking the law.
Because none of the siblings worked in Jasper, when they came to town and stayed in their house they were breaking the town鈥檚 eligible residency rules.
The rules are written in the Canada National Parks Act, and state that anyone who lives within the boundaries of a national park has to have a 鈥渘eed to reside鈥� there. In Jasper, that essentially means a person鈥檚 primary employment must be in the park.
鈥淪o you can鈥檛 work 40 hours a week in Edmonton, and four in Jasper,鈥� explained Parks Canada Realty and Municipal Manager Cathy Jenkins. She added that there are several other ways to meet the requirements, such as being a dependent or spouse of someone with eligible residency.
The rules exist to help ensure enough housing is available for people whose primary objective is to live and work in the community. Jasper requires a certain amount of people to operate on a daily basis, and those people need to have a place to live.
If the laws weren鈥檛 there, Jenkins explained, Jasper would quickly devolve into a vacation community, with houses sitting empty for most of the year.
鈥淵ou can imagine, with how popular this town is鈥攊f there wasn鈥檛 the eligible residency clauses, or the need to reside, all these people would come in and buy recreational properties. Then we would end up not having anywhere for the people who actually need to live here. They would be displaced,鈥� she said.
For Pasolli, those regulations meant that his mother鈥檚 house was essentially off limits to his family. He and his sisters were allowed to own it, but they couldn鈥檛 stay there, even for a weekend.
鈥淲e never really thought through this until it hit us right in the eyeballs, that we鈥檇 actually have to rent a hotel room to come back,鈥� Pasolli said.
鈥淢y family鈥檚 been [in Jasper] more than 60 years, and it just didn鈥檛 make sense to me.鈥�
Dealing with the possibility of losing his family home in the wake of his mother鈥檚 death was difficult enough, but Pasolli said things got worse when a Parks Canada compliance officer sent him a letter telling him the property would be 鈥渟ubject to on-going surveillance鈥� to ensure his compliance with the lease.
The letter hit his family hard, and left one of his sisters in tears, vowing never to return to the town again. Eventually, the family sold the house because, as Pasolli explained, 鈥渋t was just too much.鈥�
鈥淢y mom鈥檚 intention was always for us to have the house. Right from the time we were little kids they told us that, so that was a bit of a struggle,鈥� Pasolli said.
鈥淢y parents are buried there, my brother is buried there鈥攁nd still Jasper to me is my hometown.鈥�
Pasolli鈥檚 story demonstrates how regulations created to protect the best interest of the park and community can impact the people living here. But however unfortunate his situation is, Jenkins said the rules exist for a reason, and removing them would cause more harm than good.
She said that while Pasolli鈥檚 story 鈥渄efinitely pulls at your heart strings,鈥� it is an unfortunate side effect of some very important rules. She said there are many children who grew up in Jasper who would like to keep their family homes as vacation houses, but 鈥渋f every one of those kids had rights to come back and use their family homes as a cottage we would have a problem; it would just open a huge can of worms.
鈥淲hen you look at it under your individual circumstance it seems like, oh yeah, it makes sense I should be able to come back to my family home, but when you look at the big picture and you realize that every one of these houses was somebody鈥檚 family home at one time鈥攊t would just totally degrade the idea of eligible residency,鈥� she said.
Pasolli and his family bumped up against the town鈥檚 eligible residency regulations, but need to reside laws are just one part of a system of regulations designed to limit the size of the town. They work alongside things like the commercial cap鈥攚hich limits how much business development is allowed in the townsite鈥攖o keep Jasper at a certain physical size and population.
Limiting how many businesses are allowed to operate, in conjunction with eligible residency and the physical restrictions on the space the municipality can occupy, helps Parks ensures that the town never grows beyond a certain size. This is important to Parks because an oversized townsite would degrade the ecological integrity of the park.
鈥淚f this community expanded, and got quite a lot busier, and then the wildlife moved away and all these things happened, then there would be no purpose for being here anymore,鈥� Jenkins said. 鈥淒o you want to see Calgary in a national park?鈥�
While the limited size of the municipality helps maintain ecological integrity, it puts incredible pressure on the town鈥檚 housing and rental markets.
Dave Kriezenbeck, the acting realty and municipal services manager at Parks, pointed out that there is a zero per cent vacancy rate in Jasper, which essentially means that at all times every single potential living space is occupied. This is bad, because landlords can immediately fill empty rooms, leaving little incentive for competitive pricing and standards of quality.
鈥淵ou want some vacancies out there because you want people to be able to pick out the best places. And it forces people that have less than standard [accommodations] to up their standard,鈥� Kriezenbeck said.
The problem extends to family homes as well, with modest houses in Jasper selling for prices comparable to those found in urban centres like Calgary and Edmonton.
Many homeowners offset the cost of their mortgage by renting out rooms in their houses as 鈥渁pproved accommodations.鈥� Parks鈥� Home Accommodation program allows residential homeowners to apply for a permit to rent rooms to tourists, much like a bed and breakfast.
Rich Potter is a real estate agent who鈥檚 been operating in Jasper since 1993. He said a homeowner renting two rooms in their house as approved accommodation can bring in $20,000鈥�$30,000 a year. This is a huge boost to their income, and helps tremendously to offset the high cost of a mortgage.
Joe Couture, president of the Jasper Home Accommodation Association, said about 140 homeowners in Jasper take advantage of the program, and agreed that many use that money to help pay their mortgages.
鈥淎 home accommodation is one of the ways to help them with their financial situation,鈥� he said.
Many have pointed out that 140 homeowners using extra space in their houses to accommodate tourists represents a lot of potential housing not going to residents. If those homeowners rented long-term to people living in town instead of catering to travellers, it could help alleviate the housing crunch.
The problem, Potter explained, is that the incentive isn鈥檛 there. Most two-bedroom apartments represent about $1,000 a month (or $12,000 a year) in revenue, a pittance compared to the potential $30,000 from approved accommodation.
Kriezenbeck admitted the argument is valid, but said Parks needs to study the issue further to figure out how much impact the program has on housing. On the other side, Couture believes many who operate approved accommodations wouldn鈥檛 rent long-term in any situation.
鈥淵ou鈥檇 be surprised at how many people who do home accommodation really don鈥檛 want to do long-term rental,鈥� he said.
Parks Canada recognizes that Jasper is in the middle of a chronic housing shortage, and Jenkins said the organization is constantly working to combat it.
Kriezenbeck explained that Parks is planning, along with the municipality and other organizations, to study what kinds of housing needs to be added to fix the situation.
He explained that with the commercial cap limiting the population of the town, the solution should lie in simply building enough housing to support those people.
鈥淲e have four large residential, high-density lots in town that are sitting there waiting for direction on what to build,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he residential land is there鈥擯arks Canada just need direction on how to use it.鈥�
Potter, and fellow real estate agent Dennis Zaffino, said that a simple solution to ease the pressures of the housing shortage already exists, and could likely be enacted fairly quickly.
鈥淭he best single thing that could happen in this town to alleviate the rental housing shortage鈥攁side from adding more supply鈥攊s to allow for secondary suites in R1 areas,鈥� Potter said.
Zaffino explained that right now homeowners living in lots in the town鈥檚 single-dwelling districts (R1) are banned from building secondary suites in their homes. If this was changed, he said many would immediately build such suites, opening up a slew of additional housing opportunities in town.
Potter also suggested that allowing for developments such as apartments over garages would have a similar effect.
Kriezenbeck said that Parks will continue to study the issue, but said right now it鈥檚 impossible to tell what Jasper鈥檚 housing situation will look like in 10 years.
鈥淎re we short of housing? We think we are. What type and how many? That鈥檚 what we need to find out,鈥� he said.
The impact of development regulations in Jasper extends far beyond housing. In the next installment of Looking at Land Use, business owners chronicle their struggles operating under the regulations. Check out next week鈥檚 issue for the story.
听Trevor Nichols
reporter@fitzhugh
