A big thank you to everyone who pitched in at our work bee on Tuesday. “Many hands make light work”. We were amazed by how much was accomplished in two hours. Our beautiful trails are easier to navigate without the prickles!

Preparing for Construction at Rainbow Ridge:
As you will likely recall, CHS has applied for funding from BC Housing 3 times. Given that we haven’t received funding, the CHS board has decided to develop the first phase of the project without BC Housing subsidies. We are now preparing to pursue building 7 units of housing on the land. The first part of this work will entail clearing approximately one hectare of land for the road, parking area, houses, and utilities. We aim to do this work before the nesting season in the spring. We will be notifying the community in greater detail about this work in the weeks ahead.

District Energy Study Underway:
The Cortes Housing Society has received a grant from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) for $93,000 to evaluate the feasibility of building renewable energy, highly efficient heating and cooling systems for the Rainbow Ridge housing project. In the next few months we will be exploring if a rural housing project like ours can be heated and cooled using affordable and easy to maintain renewable energy systems. We'll be providing further updates in the months ahead.