About

Background

In September 2021, the Hornby Island Housing Network was created to bring together various island organizations and levels of local government that include housing in their mandate. The intention was to share information and resources, with the goal of co-creating a housing strategy for the island with clearly defined roles and responsibilities for each organization.

An immediate challenge was identified: the lack of a comprehensive picture of the community that included current data in all the social determinants of health areas. Although, a wealth of information had been gathered over the years by various island organizations and individuals in their efforts to create and fund services and programs that benefit the community, it became readily apparent that there was considerable duplication of effort, loss of historical data, the creation of information silos specific to each group’s focus, limited access to stored data and a lack of individual organizational capacity to carry out more in-depth research.

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A secondary issue was identified, the lack of comparative data between similar communities, the province and the country as a whole.

Although the organizations were aware of many inequities due to our rural, remote location and the disparity between low and high income residents, there was no current data to support that knowledge.

A sub-committee was formed to secure funding to create a comprehensive database for the Housing Network. A Housing Network participant, Hornby Denman Health (formerly the Hornby & Denman  Community Health Care Society) which serves both Hornby and Denman Islands requested that Denman be included in the project.

Information was gathered from a wide range of community organizations and businesses on both islands, BC Open Data, and Census Canada. To ensure we gathered as broad a base of information as possible, we spoke to 7 accommodation providers; 19 boards; 16 store-based businesses; the island Preschools, Community schools, and the Senior Secondary school; 3 environmental groups; 4 Food Security groups; 8 health care providers; 4 realtors; 3 groups involved in community safety; and 9 activity groups.

Of these 69 sources, we received information back from 56.

We also included information gathered from another project; a group of self-identified precariously housed people were interviewed over the winter of 2022 to gather current data about the number of community members living in unsafe, substandard and/or insecure housing.

Information gathered from that project is included in this report as it is possible that due to how the census forms are circulated on the islands, some of the renters included in our survey were missed in the census. It was important to us that these voices be added to this report.

The draft profiles were circulated to all the participating organizations on both islands for their review and suggestions. Their feedback has been incorporated into the final report.

Community Profiles

In order to determine what information would best meet our communities’ needs, the Research Assistant and Steering Committee reviewed other community profiles for both content and formatting and also researched the various definitions of the Social Determinants of Health.

The profiles for both islands include all available local, provincial and federal information available in the following social determinants of health: Economy, Education, Environment, Food Security, Health, Housing, Safety, Social Inclusion, and Transportation. The profiles also point out social inequities in access to services and the barriers underlying that inequity.

These profiles not only contain the information needed to co-create a housing strategy, they will also be used to inform short and long term planning for all the organizations, no matter what their mandate.

All Stats Canada information is presented as a percentage of the whole in order to see the differences in relation to the population of each area. The numbers for Denman and Hornby Islands have been added for planning purposes.

Effort has been made to present this information as it is with no analysis or conclusions drawn. We leave the information to our users to interpret for their specific area of focus.

Database

The database containing all the spreadsheets with all the data and contact information will be stored with the Hornby Island Housing Society.

Website

The website contains both the Community Profile reports in PDF form. The collected data is also presented separately in each of the social determinants of health for both islands. The website is hosted by the Hornby Island Residents and Ratepayers Society, Hornby’s local governing body and a key partner in this project.

Denman Works, the local WorkBC office on Denman Island, is in the process of creating a link for both profiles on their webpage.

There was a significant challenge to collecting health data for our two island communities. Due to the low population of each island, resulting in a lack of anonymity, Island Health were unable to release detailed data regarding the prevalence of health issues.

A second obstacle to including even general numbers related to health issues is the lack of computerized health information at the Hornby clinic.

A third area of information gathering that impacted data collection was a low response by the businesses on Hornby. We had hoped to gather information about their challenges related to the winter, shoulder and summer seasons to try to get a sense of the carrying capacity of the island and the relationship between staffing shortage issues and housing.

A fourth issue is the lack of data regarding how much of the income generated by short term rentals stays on the island and in the economy as we don’t know how many operators are year-round residents.

Although the website address has not yet been shared publicly and the final report has not yet been circulated to the island groups, at the time of writing of this report, the draft profiles and map presentations that were shared in the last few months to gather feedback, have already generated much excitement and appreciation throughout the community and there has already been significant benefit:

• Inter-agency collaboration has already deepened as organizations share their information. Two of the groups that are focussed on creating housing for the community are working more closely at the Board level.

• The Housing Network is currently using this data to inform the housing strategy for Hornby Island.
• Three other organizations are also using the information presented in the profile reports to support their planning and current funding applications.
• Denman Works will cover the cost of printing 20 copies of the Community Profiles reports
• HIRRA has covered the costs of the webpage domain and the wages for their technician to create the website account.

Next Phase

This is step one of a long-term vision for this project. We will be researching funding sources for the next phase of the project which will include the following goals:

• Additional organizations and data that may have been missed in phase one, will be identified and added to future Community Profiles and the database.
• Strategies will be created to address the issue of “hard to obtain” data.
• The database will be updated at a minimum every 2 years to ensure the community always has current information to inform its planning.

Conclusion

The two island communities will be well served by the work that has been done over the last several months. Organizations that provide services and programs in all the sectors of the social determinants of health now have a much broader understanding of the state of our communities in significant areas and thus, will be better able to address the needs that are identified and to reduce the existing inequities of access to services.

On behalf of the Hornby Housing Network and the communities of Hornby and Denman Islands, we wish to thank our partners: BC Healthy Communities – Planh for funding this project; the Comox Valley Regional District for sponsoring our application; the Hornby Island Residents and Ratepayers Association for their financial management of the project and Denman Works for sponsoring the cost of printing of the report and public announcements of the successful completion of the project.