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The Alberta government has announced $112 million in funding for interim housing to help rebuild Jasper after this summer’s devastating wildfire.
The interim housing, for which work on the sites has already begun, will be for certain displaced Jasper residents, as well as residents of the government-owned Pine Grove Senior Citizens Manor in Hinton.
Two-hundred-and-fifty modular homes will be built in Jasper for essential service workers and support-service workers, and other eligible Jasper residents who lost their homes and are employed in the area.
“When ready, these interim homes will address the immediate housing need in Jasper and provide a short-term housing option for those who are working in the town doing the critical work needed to support this rebuild,” said Alberta’s minister of seniors, community and social services, Jason Nixon.
The first residents are expected to be able to move in within three months – by January.
“The priority is to house workers employed in providing essential services,” said Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland.
Certain essential workers who have been living in hotels will move to modular homes, Ireland said, which will free up hotel rooms for tourists or other workers in the community who have lost their homes.
Ireland called the funding a “veritable lifeline” and “deeply appreciative.”
“Housing is more than simply replacing housing, buildings and structures. It is inextricably linked to our social and economic recovery,” the mayor said.
The modular homes are built off-site and installed using permanent foundations. Nixon says some or all of the modular units could remain in Jasper once the town is rebuilt, since there was already a housing need.
Alternatively, the mobile structures can be moved elsewhere as needed, such as to remote First Nation communities, Nixon said.
“It gives us options to use them elsewhere,” the minister explained.
Roughly one-third of the town of Jasper was destroyed in a fast-moving wall of flames in July.
In Hinton, some 25 units of modular housing will be built for seniors of Pine Grove Manor. The units will later be used as affordable housing for the community. Work will begin in January.