Seven months after wildfire, temporary housing arrives in Jasper

The first trailers to house displaced locals rolled into Jasper, Alta., this week, about seven months after a third of the town was ravaged by a runaway wildfire.

By the end of the week, about 100 trailers containing approximately 200 livable spaces are expected to be in the snow-covered town.

“This is a significant milestone to have interim housing units arrive in Jasper,” said Michael Fark, director of recovery for the municipality.

“It’s been a process that’s been full of compromises, and there was no perfect or elegant solution that was going to meet everybody’s needs and in a perfect timeline.”

The initial delivery will accommodate about 150 households, Fark said. Essential workers such as teachers, doctors and nurses move in first.

Another 120 units of worker-style camps, featuring private bedrooms and bathrooms with shared kitchen spaces, are expected for later this month.

The interim housing will take up most of Jasper’s available land. As such, the town won’t be able to accommodate all of the more than 600 individuals and families who have applied for housing.

The Alberta government recently quarrelled with the federal and local governments over how the town should proceed with the rebuild.

The provincial government, which had committed $112 million for housing, said last month the majority of its money would be off the table if it wasn’t used to build detached, single-family homes.

The municipality and Parks Canada have said they wish to take a different direction by prioritizing higher-density housing, though it will take longer to build. Jasper, which relies on tourism and the workers who support the industry, has long experienced a zero per cent vacancy rate.

The cost of servicing the interim housing sites with water and installing roads, among other things, is expected to cost the town between $5 million and $7 million, Fark said — an expense he said the province had previously committed to covering with its $112 million.

“Now that they are no longer providing interim housing, we are still in ongoing discussion with them around how to solve the funding for the site servicing costs,” he said. Fark said last month that Jasper wouldn’t be able to absorb that level of cost on its own.

In a statement, Alberta Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver said Parks Canada is building on land the town paid to service.

“As site servicing is a typical expense for home building, I would encourage the Municipality of Jasper to continue to work with the federal government as they are the ones building on the serviced land,” McIver wrote.

Fark added $18 million committed by the province for seniors accommodations in Hinton is still going ahead.

Terry Duguid, the federal government’s ministerial lead on the recovery, wrote a letter last week to the province extending an invitation to “work together” on the rebuild. Duguid recently replaced beleaguered Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault on the Jasper file after questions were raised about the now-former cabinet minister’s claims of Indigenous identity.

“Mandating low density, detached homes will never meet local demand,” Duguid wrote to Jason Nixon, the Alberta government’s minister of seniors, community and social services.

“I sincerely hope we can work together to find a better way forward on behalf of the residents of Jasper.”

Since last July’s wildfire, the Alberta government has supplied Jasper with more than $178 million.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2025.

Matthew Scace, The Canadian Press