The affordability and accessibility of housing is a major issue in Weyburn and area, the provincial Task Force on Housing Affordability heard in their Weyburn stop on Wednesday, the first of a 10-city tour around the province.

The task force is headed up by former Social Services minister (and current councillor for the City of Saskatoon) Bob Pringle, and former MLA Ted Merriman. They were charged by current Social Services minister Donna Harpauer "to gather input and provide recommendations to the provincial government on policies to encourage greater housing affordability."

Mayor Debra Button met the task force along with City manager Bob Smith and city councillors Dick Michel and Nancy Styles.

"The bottleneck for Weyburn is housing. You can find someone to work for you, but the next step is finding a place to live. We don't want to see what happened in Alberta happen here," said the mayor, adding Weyburn's vacancy rate right now is zero.

"There has to be a solution coming from the federal, provincial and municipal levels, and it can't be a blanket solution. It's not a one-size-fits-all problem. What works in P.A. won't necessarily work in Weyburn," said Mayor Button .

She said the city and the task force members had a "good dialogue" with a healthy free-flow of ideas between them on different options that can be considered.

Fred Sandeski of the Community Low Income Centre was also one of the presenters to the task force, and brought a number of issues that are affecting low income people in the city.

At the top of his list were concerns with the rental supplements, and how there are people in need who can't even apply for them.

"A lot of low income people rely heavily on supplements. There are too many cracks in the system. A lot of people aren't able to apply because of the way it's set up; it's geared specifically to those with special needs," said Sandeski, adding that low income housing needs to be more inclusive, as housing available through such agencies as Weyburn Housing are only provided to families and not to single people, leaving single people with nowhere to go.

In addition, Sandeski told the task force that there are inconsistencies in how the supplements are provided. He gave an example of a girl who was receiving around $117 as a rental supplement for a place that cost around $450 a month; when she was going to moving into a house that cost $600 a month to rent, the supplement was only increased to $130 a month.

"There's no consistency in the amounts they're giving," said Sandeski, pointing out that with the zero vacancy, most rental places cost at least $600 a month and up.

"There are no places for a single individual," he said, going on to add Saskatchewan Housing gears rent to 30 per cent of the gross income (before taxes are taken off), when it should be 30 per cent of the net income, since that's what a low income person has available to work with.

Sandeski also noted that any plans that are put in place by agencies or governments are short-term only and not long-term.

"Anything that's going to be put in has to be geared for the future, not just for today's needs. The city itself has got nothing in place; they have a great community development plan, but no time line. They have really impressive documentation, but I don't see anything being put in place for the future. Let's start the process and put plans in place so we can meet these goals," he said.

One of the areas that will need addressing, he added, is transitional housing for immigrants, since a number of companies are looking at bringing in skilled immigrants to meet the shortage of skilled labour in the area.

In talking about the job ahead for the task force, Pringle said they want to talk to a balanced group of stakeholders from the community, from council to developers, local representatives of the Housing Authority and any other agencies dealing with housing.

"Our main focus will be to find ways to cooperate with the local government and developers on how we can provide affordable housing to those most in need," said Pringle.

In the short-term they want to examine how communities can stay ahead of the economic development curve, so workers will have a place to live when they come here to work, and for the long-term, what sort of policy discussions need to be taking place.

The task force is to bring forward a report with recommendations to minister Harpauer by May 30 of this year, to help the government in developing an affordable housing strategy.

He noted that the situation for housing in Weyburn (like much of the rest of the province) has changed dramatically in the last couple of years, going from a vacancy rate of around 10-12 per cent, to zero today, with activities in the oil sector increasing and grain prices for farmers improving, spurring on such activities as construction, and expansion and growth in area businesses.

"When we came down here, we had the sense it's a capacity issue. There are waiting lists for low income housing, so it's an affordability issue as well," he said, adding from the other end of the spectrum, the government and the city need to look at what can be done with developers so they will agree to build low income housing, and not just housing for high-end consumers.

"We're hearing from surrounding communities as well. We want the whole province to grow together, including places like Ogema, Yellow Grass, Radville," said Pringle, adding Saskatchewan needs to learn from Alberta, where they are dealing with thousands of homeless in Calgary because there is no housing available for them.