Parks Canada is changing its policies to allow secondary suites, which they say will promote more affordable housing for the community.

But will it?

Are we really to believe that there are a whole bunch of homeowners out there with unused spaces who are just waiting for the OK to start renting them out? Or is it more likely that those spaces, where they exist, are already chopped up and suited out? Those who’ve had to live in those spaces—in other words, most of us—know the answer to that.

What this policy change seems to be addressing is the impending lease renewals which Cabin Creek homeowners, in particular, will have to deal with when their 42-year leases come up in 2022. But because complying with Parks Canada’s new policy will be an enormous expense for most homeowners, if Parks Canada is bent on enforcing it, it will likely mean the folks currently residing in those suites will be left with no place to live.

That’s the cold, ironic reality of this policy: less places to live, not more.

Equally troubling is how the recent hard line interpretation of Parks Canada’s land use regulations will devalue the homes currently on the market. Private Home Accommodations (PHAs) have suddenly been categorized as a home-based business. Home based businesses are not to occupy more than 10 per cent of the building’s gross floor area, which seems logical for an office or crafting studio. However, it becomes less logical if that rule is carried over to PHAs. Most homes fit with a PHA are valued, in part, based on that suite’s earning potential. For Parks to suddenly say those PHAs can’t be used in the way that homeowners have been historically doing is unfair. Imagine if you took out a mortgage on a house based on the earning potential of its PHAs that have been hosting guests for 40 years, then learning that—sorry, the rules have changed—you can’t actually book those suites out. It’s a financially crippling scenario.

Parks Canada said it’s making the changes based on the feedback it heard. Or was it the feedback they wanted to hear? 

It’s all well and good to want to increase the rental spaces in Jasper. But for many (most?) Jasper homeowners, the only way they can get in the market here is to rent out a PHA.

This meddling—well-intentioned as it might seem—is going to leave families, and renters, in the lurch.

Homeowners and renters have the opportunity to ask Parks Canada officials about these new changes at an open house on March 5 at the Development and Realty office, located in Parks Canada’s Administration Building in the Heritage Train Station. The Open House runs from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com