The Propolis Cooperative Housing Society says it has reached a milestone in its quest to raise money to build a cooperative housing development in Kamloops.
The society says it has successfully raised $1.1 million from 101 different investors to advance its 53-unit affordable, net-zero housing building on at 422-424 Tranquille Road.
Propolis Executive Director Lindsay Harris calls it a huge success and notes that this is the first community bond campaign that’s been run in Western Canada. “We launched it back in June of 2023, and we successfully purchased our property last year and now we’ve fully completed the the bond campaign. That campaign is successfully closed. We have 101 investors who have contributed to supporting us to purchase this property for our first affordable housing development.”
BC Interior Community Foundation, Shuswap Community Foundation, Central Okanagan Foundation, Community Foundation of the North Okanagan, and Community Foundation of the South Okanagan Similkameen jointly invested $100,000, demonstrating the power of shared regional values and community-led financing.
“Kamloops is experiencing a deepening housing crisis,” said Harris. “Renters earning a median income can’t afford to live in Kamloops without experiencing significant financial stress. This isn’t just about housing, it’s about our ability to thrive as a community. This bond campaign proves that when we come together, we can reimagine what’s possible for the people who live and work here.”
“It can be really hard to get a housing Co-Op started and off the ground. And so we turned to community bonds as a way to allow the community of Kamloops and across BC to support us to purchase our first property. And so the people that are investing with us, they they’ll get a financial return on their investment, but they also get to know that their investment dollars are having a huge impact in the community.”
“The people who are choosing to invest with us are people who are passionate about helping solve the housing crisis in the community, creating community led solutions to that they’re also passionate about. The social and environmental impacts that we want to have with our project, with it being an affordable, Net Zero development, so it really gives people a chance to see their money invested locally. They’ll get a financial return, but they get to know that they’re making a huge difference with those dollars.”
Harris says they’re slowly getting closer to developing the property and there is hope that construction will start before the end of 2025. “We’re deep into the pre-development planning process, so we’re working really closely with our architects and our development managers to make sure that we’ve got the absolute best building design going forward. And we’ll be expecting to submit our development permit application in the coming months and and then hopefully seeing construction activities kind of getting started closer to the end of this year.”
Harris encourages community members to stay tuned for more on this project as well as the potential for more projects like this down the road. “The way that propolis can be deeply engaged with the neighborhood and with people in Kamloops, it’s really important for for people to be able to feel like they can have a say in how development happens in our community. We don’t often get that chance and so we’re kind of trying to create those opportunities for people to stay involved with us.”
This investment campaign is closed, but there remains some hope for another similar project in the future. “But that’s still to come in the future,” says Harris. “So for right now, we’re trying to stay really engaged to the community and offer people opportunities to just think about how development is happening and think about how average folks in the community can contribute to creating solutions for the housing crisis.”
