Kelowna's rental housing stock is getting old: report | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan's News Source
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Kelowna's rental housing stock is getting old: report

Image Credit: City of Kelowna

KELOWNA - The city’s first ever Rental Housing Inventory shows that the majority of rentals in the city are 40 years old and mostly one or two bedrooms units.

A report on the rental housing situation is going to Kelowna city council on Monday, Aug. 26.

It shows there is a growing need for rental units as 73 per cent of new households in the five years from 2011 to 2016 were rentals. The rate was 32 per cent in the previous five years.

That led to a rental vacancy rate of 0.6 per cent in 2016 that has improved only slightly to 1.9 per cent last year.

There are 8,090 rental apartment units in the city. Of those, 6,667 are market rentals in 146 buildings while 1,423 in 29 buildings are subsidized.

The inventory doesn’t include things like secondary suites or anything smaller than a four-plex.

Of the market rental buildings, 80 per cent have one or two bedroom units, while 63 per cent were built before 1980.

Subsidized buildings had 76 per cent of the units as one or two bedrooms with half of them built between 1980 and 1990.

The age of the buildings means many need major upgrades.

The city will put on a workshop for building owners and operators in the fall to connect them with funding agencies.

It will also look at ways to encourage more rental housing through things like tax credits for revitalization, rent-only zones and density bonuses.


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