Yellowknife developer said Bellanca was going to be affordable housing. Here's why it won't be

When Borealis Development Inc. first envisioned renovating the former Bellanca building in downtown Yellowknife, the dream was for it to be 100 per cent affordable housing.

Now when the building opens, there may be a few units that will be considered affordable, but at least the vast majority will be offered at market rental value.

Afzal Suri, co-founder and developer of Borealis Development Inc. which owns the building, spoke at the N.W.T.'s standing committee on social development meeting in mid-November about obstacles private developers face around offering low cost housing.  

"So there weren't proper incentives to create that affordable housing, so what we had to do was change our course a couple of times," he said at the meeting.

The committee meeting was about the N.W.T. adopting housing as a human right. 

No private affordable housing options in Yellowknife

Housing is considered "affordable" if it costs less than 30 per cent of a household's before-tax income, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). Affordable housing can be offered by government, the private sector or the non-profit sector.

Yellowknife Mayor Rebecca Alty said there are currently no private affordable housing options in the city. 

Borealis Development Inc. isn't the first private company that announced it planned to offer affordable housing.

In 2021, Range Lake Developments purchased several buildings throughout the city and said the plan was to offer affordable housing.

CBC News reached out to Range Lake Developments to ask if it followed through on the plan, but never received a response. 

At the time, the company said it was coming up with a plan with Housing N.W.T. and the CMHC. Housing N.W.T. said it's not involved in the project. 

Alty said in order to offer private affordable housing, there needs to be government programs. 

"It needs the capital dollars in order to build," she said. 

"The market is not going to come in and say we're going to build this at a loss."

No meeting with former housing minister

Suri, the co-owner of Borealis Development, said the same at the committee meeting — that they would have needed government support to follow through on offering affordable housing.

He said he wasn't able to arrange a meeting with the previous housing minister to explain the project. 

"It was more or less baffling that we're crying about housing and someone is willing to put in housing and we weren't able to have a meeting with the previous MLA," Suri said during the meeting. 

CBC News reached out to former housing minister Paulie Chinna, but never received a response.  

When asked at the meeting if he had been in touch with the current housing minister, Suri said he hadn't because the company had already arranged financing and was about to complete the project.

"We didn't feel like we needed to go to the new minister as everything was essentially done," he said.

Suri said there are CMHC programs for developing affordable, public and social housing, but they are typically catered toward non-profits. He said the issue with this is that non-profits often don't have the experience building housing and can end up going over budget and being taken advantage of. 

Suri said offering a public-private partnership would improve the state of housing in the North and increase the options.

Shauna Morgan, MLA for Yellowknife North and acting chair of the committee, asked Suri what that public-private partnership would actually look like. 

Suri said in terms of what his company's plan was for the former Bellanca building, he wanted to be responsible for the renovation and construction and then for the government to take over operations. 

"I think the government can monitor affordability a lot better than the private sector can," he said. 

"As long as we were able to find a capable organization to let them operate the entire building. We weren't looking to have ownership of this building at the end of the build." 

Borealis Development will be the private landlord, but Suri said they are open to another organization taking over the building.  

Construction on the former Bellanca building began in April and it is expected to open at the end of February 2025.