Everyone deserves a place to call home, but with market prices soaring, unlocking the door to home-sweet-home is an increasingly difficult goal. The City of Lloydminster, AB/SK is tackling its housing crisis head-on with the HAPPY Plan: an actionable pathway to developing more diverse housing options. Learn how our planning team is empowering this community to help their neighbours and build a stronger future.
Broadening housing availability
Lloyminster is a bi-provincial city spanning across both Alberta and Saskatchewan. Due to this unique positioning, the City has its own charter, pulling rules from both systems. Combining diverse viewpoints across two different socioeconomic areas leads to both promising developments and complex challenges, particularly in terms of funding and housing.
In 2024, the City kicked off its Housing Needs Assessment and Strategy to address rising housing diversity issues. Without a lot of housing choice in the area, real estate prices did not reflect true affordability, leading to an increased homeless population. The City formed a proactive housing working group to not only study its housing challenges but put a feasible action plan into motion.
Our planning team was hired to guide this plan and bring competing voices together into one cohesive vision.
Shifting perspectives
New and more diverse types of housing are often met with confusion or fear. But the reality is that housing choice is important for everyone in a community. This includes seniors looking to downsize, young families entering the market, renters, workforce housing, supportive housing, and people seeking options that better match their stage of life or financial situation. These realities are not always immediately visible, so helping communities understand the full spectrum of housing needs and how different housing types contribute to healthy, resilient communities is important to building understanding and support.
Cue the HAPPY Plan. Intentionally named to spark positivity, this project aims to not only find ideal locations for affordable housing developments and expand housing options, but to also empower community members in supporting their neighbours.
Our planning experts developed the HAPPY Plan to help humanize the housing crisis through compassionate, forward-thinking community engagement. Using empathetic questions that both acknowledge resident trepidation while encouraging open-mindedness, our team is working to:
- Build comfort with housing types across the full housing spectrum
- Promote housing choice as an opportunity for stability and hope
- Find the right locations and partnerships to promote new projects across Lloydminster
- Address community fears through continuing education
“We’re opening conversations to address community fears head on. For example, for those with financial and tax dollar concerns, we share how homelessness is actually more expensive. Our systems spend $80,000 a year to keep someone homeless, where it would cost $40,000 to house them. By spending half the amount, you could get someone a home. We meet people where they are to foster understanding and plan for the future.”
Nicole Cronkhite, MSc.URP, B.Tech., DID., IAP2, Planner & Project Manager
Welcome home
The HAPPY Plan’s ultimate goal is to get shovels in the ground and start creating real housing opportunities. Our team continues to push forward with community engagement events as well as funding research and extensive heat-mapping work to identify Lloydminster’s best development site options. Bringing together so many variables takes patience and passion; luckily, this plan is on its way to a happy ending.
“As planners, we address real things society is experiencing. We play a hand in shaping what we hope are positive outcomes for different people in different sub-sectors, collecting those diverse perspectives and changing the narrative for the better as we go.”
Elisa Stamatakis, RPP, MCIP, IAP2, Alberta Planning Leader
Work with expert community planners
Our team approaches planning as professional problem-solving, grounded in real challenges, opportunities, and community context. Connect with our team to learn more.