B.C.’s Housing Minister is suggesting the hammer won’t be coming down on Kamloops – at least not for now – despite projections the city is going to miss its housing targets.

Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon does say it’s “troubling” to hear that Kamloops is projecting that it’s going to miss its 2024 housing targets by some 20 per cent.

“Especially because when we set the target, it actually at 75 per cent of what’s actually needed,” Kahlon suggested to Radio NL on NL Newsday.

“We made it actually less than what was needed in the community, because we knew it was going to be hard. So knowing that it’s [the City of Kamloops’ projections] much less than that, it certainly a real challenge.”

Despite this, Kahlon says his Ministry will be working with the City of Kamloops to achieve their demands, suggesting the legislation they’ve passed gives the city the tools it needs.

“Up to four units on single-family lots, having more density pre-approved near transit, all these things are built there [in the legislation] to help the communities [on the province’s housing target list] reach their targets, because doing what they’ve been doing normally, whether it’s Kamloops or any other community, it’s just not going to meet the need,” said Kahlon.

As for any potential sanctions, Kahlon suggests it’s too early in the process to even consider that.

“I didn’t expect Kamloops to have their complete target met in four months,” joked Kahlon. “But that being said, it is still indicative of the need for us to have reforms in our system.”

Internal analysis done by the City of Kamloops suggests the city is likely only going to see 534 new housing units come online, which is 145 – or over 20 per cent – less than the province is demanding of Kamloops for this year.

The City’s Director of Development, Marvin Kwiatkowski, in confirming to Radio NL their internal projections, has suggested their hands are somewhat tied.

“We’re dealing with some labour market issues. We’re dealing with high interest rates. Some people might be looking at putting their projects off. We’ve got quite a few projects that aren’t simply moving along if you’re looking at single family homes,” said Kwiatkowski.

“A lot of people are not looking to build right at this point and time just because of the interest rates. When I’m meeting with developers, the numbers are tight.”

Under the provincial housing rules set out by Victoria, the B.C. government does have a number of tools to persuade Kamloops and the nine other communities on its ‘hit list’ to meet their targets.

This could include the province bringing in advisors to determine what steps need to be taken to get a municipality to achieve the targets, or in more extreme cases, take control of a municipal government’s development process to fast-track approvals.