Jan 2025 – BVRH Bulletin – Reg format
Monthly Bulletin
January 2025
NEWS, INITIATIVES, AND EVENTS
Dental Hygienist Onsite
Kristy Gerber and her team from My Mobile Dental Hygienist are now offering mobile services to our Bow River Lodge and Bow Rive Homes clients at our Canmore Campus. Please contact them at (403) 988-1691 or by email at info@mmdh.ca for more information.
Continuing Care Wing Occupancy
The first floor continues to fill slowly through a measured, responsible pace. As of writing 40% of the spaces are open and we anticipate full occupancy in 2025. We, along with our partners SE Health have proven that employee housing is key to maintaining the staff levels required to operate the care facility; BVRH will increase the number of double-occupancy employee housing spaces from four to seven in 2025.
2025 Budget Development
The 2025 Budget Development process is nearly complete.
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Supportive Living and Continuing Care clients can expect inflationary increases of approximately 3% to lodge accommodation and continuing care accommodation fees.
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Our combined 2025 operating budgets are expected to total approximately $10.5 million, $9.7 million of which serves our Supportive Living and Continuing Care clients in Banff and Canmore.
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Our total 2025 Municipal Requisition will support our lodge supportive living programs and is expected to be unchanged from 2024. Requisition levels have been quite stable since 2021.
PROGRAM OCCUPANCY RATES
Bow River Lodge – SL 100%
Bow River Lodge – CCHTB 70%
Cascade House 71%
Bow River Homes 100%
Mount Edith House 100%
Community Housing 100%
Rent Supplement 100%
SPECIAL PROJECTS
This is Home (Phase 3+)
Considering ongoing, stubborn uncertainty in the interest rate markets, rising construction costs and challenges aligning GOA and CMHC funding, as well as funding program requirements, we will not submit our proposal to Alberta Seniors, Community, and Social Supports until the next round later in 2025. Upon consultations with senior staff from the Ministry and housing consultants, we will revise some components of our proposal and provide more detail for others. Our proposal will be reinforced with an enhanced business case in development in collaboration with a broad-scale construction and design firm, who are lending us their expertise on a voluntary basis. Meanwhile, we will seek CMHC seed funding to advance our planning to get to constructions-ready status.
These projects will allow us to develop greater certainty toward future capital and operational sustainability. The province received approximately $500 million in funding requests in 2023 for which they had $80 million to spend, this time they have $150 million to fund projects.
These projects, if approved, will refresh much of our Community and Seniors’ Independent Housing stock while adding different types and affordability levels of housing to the region in Canmore and perhaps elsewhere. We hope that the GOA will appreciate and be able to approve the opportunity here and that we will be able to collaborate with them, the Town of Canmore, and ideally other Housing Agencies to address some of the housing crisis in the Bow Valley.
RESOURCES
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If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, please call 911.
• For 24/7 nurse advice and general health information for Albertans information on diseases, treatments, staying well, and healthcare services dial 811.
• For 24/7 community program & service information, including affordability programming in the Bow Valley dial 211.
• If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, call or text 988.
ABOUT BOW VALLEY REGIONAL HOUSING
Bow Valley Regional Housing (BVRH) is a Housing Management Body (HMB) serving the Government of Alberta and the Bow Valley Region. HMB operational funding sources vary. Tenants pay accommodation fees. Those fees are subject to affordability limits, which prevent them from fully covering the costs of operations. Provincial grants and municipal ratepayer requisitions subsidize seniors lodge deficits, while the province also subsidizes deficits in independent seniors and community housing.
As the HMB for the Bow Valley region, BVRH is responsible for social housing, as well as affordable supportive living accommodation for seniors throughout Kananaskis Country, the Bow Corridor, the MD of Bighorn, and all of Banff National Park, an area covering about 13,500 square kilometers.
All told, we currently house, or help to house approximately 500 residents of the Bow Valley in eight permanent housing projects encompassing 33 separate buildings.
