With mining-related activity due to create as many as 1,000 new jobs, Kirkland Lake will need 100 new houses built every year for the next six years just to keep pace, according to an Ottawa-based consultant.
This is sobering news for the booming town of 10,000, where strong gold prices are already leaving many newcomers with “considerable” difficulty finding a place to stay.
“There's very little supply in virtually all sectors,” says Paul Knowlton, vice-president of CRG Consulting, which has been contracted by the municipality to help assess and address its housing issue.
“Anybody coming to town or considering coming here for employment will be very challenged to find housing, so the supply has to get increased one way or another. These new numbers are big numbers for a place that was in decline not so long ago, so it's a challenge but it's got a big upside.”
While the potential population explosion stands to be good news for Kirkland Lake, it stands as a daunting situation for the small town. Local resources threaten to be greatly strained by managing this strong housing need, which requires an immediate and rapid response to keep pace with the mines' needs, says Wilfred Hass, the town's director of economic development.
There are currently as many as 50 municipally owned greenfield sites ready for housing development, but far more land packages will have to be assembled and serviced in order to accommodate any potential new development. In contrast to many areas in Temiskaming Shores which feature flat farmland, much of the Kirkland Lake area is replete with hills and rocky regions, further complicating development.
This means much of the town's efforts in the immediate future will be spent puzzling over areas for new development, while also determining how to draw in the developers who will ultimately be needed to provide the necessary housing.
Officials are also looking at the potential to establish a single point of contact for interested builders, with a streamlined system of communication and approvals. As part of that package, the possibility to integrate the local land and lot inventory with an online geographic information system (GIS) is also being developed. This will allow out-of-town firms to look at what's available and move on with the process as rapidly as possible, says Hass.
To help gain a greater understand of these and other challenges that await them in the coming years, town officials are looking to develop an eight-lot subdivision using their own resources rather than that of the private sector.
“It will be a real challenge for us, but we're committed to dealing with it, and we have to be flexible in bringing developers to the table.”
The quality-of-life issue is something that's strong in the region, and Knowlton says Kirkland Lake has more amenities than most other towns of its size. These include anything from full-sized swimming pools to a skateboard and bicycle park, to trail systems and championship-winning karate clubs.
While local entrepreneurs have helped to bolster the downtown retail sector, the big-box element has yet to make any large-scale proposals, something Hass says may eventually occur once housing begins to fill out.
Although the future is something that also holds great interest for Mike Guimond, a local realtor, it's the existing pressures on the housing market that highlight just how much work needs to be done, he says.
“I've been doing this for 32 years, and while I've seen some good times for the housing market in Kirkland Lake, it's never been as good as it is right now,” says Guimond. “It's definitely a seller's market.”
As Kirkland Lake Gold has begun to hire more and more workers for its local projects, greater and greater tightness has been felt in housing. A property that would have taken four to five months to sell even a few years ago is now being sold in less than a week if priced reasonably.
In response, average prices have climbed from $55,000-$60,000 to roughly $80,000. In some of the new parts of town, $100,000 homes have in some cases sold for 50 per cent more.
The housing situation is also applying great pressure to the rental market, where vacancy rates have dropped from 20 per cent just four years ago to less than 3 per cent today.
No new apartment construction is on the books, and the combination of building costs and the elevated rents that would be required to recoup those prices, as well as the elevated local tax rate, are keeping new projects at bay, says Guimond.
Even temporary lodgings are few and far between in Kirkland Lake. The town has just two hotels, with a combined total of 120 rooms.
Hass says there's “easily” room in the local market for another motel of 60 rooms or more, and that some very preliminary interest for such construction has been shown by some southern Ontario firms. However, this is not something that has been aggressively pursued or marketed by the municipality, which has dedicated much of its recent focus on commercial development.
A combination of these efforts is exactly what Kirkland Lake will need to keep on top of its impending housing challenge, says Knowlton, who adds there is no single catch-all solution. The way forward, he says, will involve a patchwork of a number of different approaches.
“If you can get different activities in different sectors, even little bits here and there, they're all going to add up and help,” says Knowlton. “If you can get somebody to build some amount of seniors' housing, some amount of family-oriented housing, and some possibility of rentals or social housing, any and all of those things will make a difference.”
