Vida's View

Rotary Club of Port Moody Feb. 11, 2015

Isy has been a member 14 years on Valentine’s Day!

Peter and Ian:  Search for the Perfect Pint arrangements are coming along well, We have 11 breweries, and they are very eager!

The new T-shirts are in, see Peter

Ian:  check out  www.pmribfest.ca.  Next meeting is March 13^th.

Ian is going to Ecuador to help set up for a grant request next year.

Remember the Rotaract Random Act of Kindness.  Meet Feb. 22^nd at 1:00 pm.

We clean up Heritage Mountain on Saturday the 14^th.  Meet at 9:30 am at Gallaghers

Rotary Leadership Institute is March 21 at Sunrise Conference Center, Surrey.  Details on the District website

Guests this week were: Lois, Guest of Vida, Coquitlam Sunrise member and Julia's sister Preet Pael & Leanne Drolet and Guest Speaker James Roy.

Next week:  we greet Antony as our new member!

Guest Speaker:  James Roy, BC Nonprofit Housing Assn.

Mr Roy gave us much information from the Rental Housing Index, which can be used as a planning tool, since it accumulates statistics from various locations, such as the census, the National Household Survey to determine the situation of renters in BC.

It tracks such numbers as:

    How many people are paying 30% of their income for housing or,

50% which indicates that people are not earning enough.  Also, how many renters are living in overcrowded situations.   This is particularly true of university and college students

Port Moody has some 2900 rental households, 18% of whom pay more than half their income on housing.  The average rental in Port Moody is $1218.

The purpose of gathering these statistics is for advocacy, developing housing strategy, to encourage the formation of government programs.  Currently there are no Canadian government programs to encourage entrepreneurs to build affordable housing

As always, the “working poor” get nothing..

“What gets reported, gets done”