Labrador West housing is critically low, residents warn — but government wants industry to step up

Residents of Labrador West say the region is facing one of the province's worst housing crises, with near-zero vacancies and sky-high rent — and while the province's housing minister agrees, he says expanding industry needs to pitch in to solve the supply issue.

A handful of protesters, including business owner Trevor Tobin, have been demanding action on the issue by taking to the streets daily over the last two weeks.

"We have lots of family, friends ... that would like to move back to this town, but there's nowhere to rent, nowhere for them to go," Tobin said.

Tobin and protester Gerard Murphy, who's facing eviction, both blame contracting companies for filling up any available apartments and driving up rent.

"Contractors [have] taken over all the buildings," Murphy told Radio-Canada on Wednesday.

"We have no senior housing, we have nothing for the people here. Everybody's getting put out on the street."

Tobin says others are trying to sell their homes to capitalize on the low-inventory market.

"And then it's the businesses buying them up to put employees into," he said.

"We're going into a couple of decades here of a housing crisis that nothing has ever been done about.... There hasn't been enough noise made about it. So Gerard's out here trying to advocate for it, and we're behind him [to] try to make some noise to the right people to start getting shovels in the ground."

Housing Minister John Abbott agrees: the situation is dire.

"It's a classic supply and demand situation. The supply is limited," Abbott told CBC on Friday.

"There hasn't been really much new construction in Labrador City or Wabash in terms of new housing."

Abbott says families in Labrador West are sticking around after retirement or moving back from Newfoundland. Meanwhile, businesses are expanding and hiring more staff — creating a potent recipe for disaster.

"The housing is just not available. Consequently, housing costs have gone up, rents have gone up," Abbott said.

The minister says the province has put up some funding for a 40-unit apartment building, and hopes construction will begin next year. He says he's working with Ottawa for more financial help with that project, and once that's "up and running," Abbott says his department will start eyeing other potential housing developments.

One problem, he says, is a lack of interest from private developers, who aren't keen to do business in such a remote region.

A recent call for proposals for affordable housing contracts "didn't get any [uptake] in Labrador, partly because of the construction cost and availability of contractors," he said. "That's the challenge ... we have to work with the with the private sector to work around those issues."

But the burden, he believes, shouldn't be carried solely by government.

"I think the companies have an obligation to step up on that," Abbott said. "We know the mines are expanding, new mines want to come into play. So we've got to get onto this right away."

Tobin, frustrated by the lack of action, thinks industry and government should be working together to identify land and get up temporary housing for contractors, at the very least.

"If we don't want to see this town turning into just only fly-in and fly-out, we need families to move here," he said.

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