After over a year of construction, the Naut’sa Mawt building will have an opening ceremony Friday.
The Wachiay Friendship Centre began the Naut’sa Mawt project in May 2020 to build a 5-storey building with 40 affordable housing units for low-income Indigenous elders and adults.
The units will include 8 studios, 23 one-bedrooms, and 9 accessible one-bedrooms.
After getting a building permit and funding, construction began on June 15th 2023, finishing at the end of February this year.
Coordinator of Homeless and Housing programs Roger Kishi says getting this far is a feeling of great accomplishment.
“It has been something the Wachiay Friendship Centre has really hoped to be able to do since forming back in 1995,” said Kishi.
“There is a great sense of accomplishment and joy of finally accomplishing this goal of providing affordable housing to the community.”
While construction finished this year, Kishi says the building was planned to finish in late-2024, but adds there’s always a process when it comes to letting tenants in.
“The day of construction completion, you really can’t start moving tenants in because there is a process for selecting them, and that takes time as well,” said Kishi.
He says with the building finished, they are in the process of letting tenants in through the BC Housing Registry, with 4 tenants to be moved in by Wednesday.
To celebrate getting tenants in, a ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held at the building’s location at 1679 McPhee Avenue at 3:00 p.m.
