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Help desperately wanted: Squamish businesses held back by lack of staff

“The running joke is, are your kids old enough to serve yet?”
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There has been a help wanted sign on the Locavore food truck for two years.

“It never comes down,” said Steve Moir, who owns Locavore as well as the Cloudburst Café and The Joinery. Together, Moir’s three outfits employ about 40 people but he’s always looking for more.

“We’re always able to manage but we could be doing much better if we had more staff,” he said. The problem is the lack of affordable housing since the Squamish real estate market spiked in recent years. Housing may be plentiful enough for computer programmers and telecommuters, but for people living on the kinds of wages offered in the service sector, appropriate housing is a challenge.

“We’ve always paid above minimum wage, even to our entry-level staff,” Moir said. “However, it definitely is a challenge in retaining staff for a long period of time.” Compounding the comparatively new phenomenon of high housing costs, the seasonality of the community is also an issue. People often come for the summer season or the winter season, but finding year-round staff can be difficult, he said.

As a result, Moir and other business owners say, they are in a constant state of competition for employees and, in some cases, have to reduce their hours due to lack of staff.

“We would love to be open seven days a week,” Moir said of the Locavore. “We have the capacity and the clientele to do so, but what we are short on is the staff. By the same token, we’d like to be open longer hours. However, staffing is just a challenge. We have good core management staff, and most of them have been longtime residents here, so they are settled for housing. But servers, line cooks, prep cooks, those guys are few and far between to come by these days.”

He is advertising for staff in Ontario and offering incentives for employees who stay at least four months. The topic on the street, Moir said, is whether the people he runs into know anyone looking for work. “The running joke is, are your kids old enough to serve yet?” he said. “It’s right up there with Canadians talking about the weather: the state of Squamish and how it is as a business owner and operator to try to maintain staffing levels.”

Students at Quest University are an important part of the service industry in town, Moir added, but the dorms close down during academic breaks so, at the very time when they might be able to take on more hours, they have nowhere to sleep.

“If I’m going away, I let students stay in my house,” he said. “We have an RV that we have had staff stay in while they are transitioning here from another town to come work.”

For years, he said, there have been people living in vans around Squamish.

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Children play at the Kinderbarn in Valleycliffe. The daycare has had to end one of its program's for lack of staff. - Submitted

Daycare owner, Laurie Skinner has had to shut the infant and toddler program at her Valleycliffe centre, due to a lack of staff.

Early in July, one of her teachers had to leave due to a sudden illness, and she has been unable to find a trained replacement to work at the daycare, Kinderbarn.

“I had even tried to coax teachers from Vancouver and North and West Vancouver and to offer rental accommodation and pay for transport or fuel.  Nothing — the higher cost of living in Squamish, the lack of regular buses from downtown make it virtually impossible to try and find people to work,” she told The Chief.

She announced the end of the program earlier this week.

“I really feel bad as I worked up until the 24th-hour thing to keep my toddler group together, but there was no longer any alternative to caring for them,” she said.

 “I was alone. Working 10 to 12 hours a day, five days a week, with up to eight children is one crazy notion.”

Rick Willison, operations manager at Ground Up Climbing Centre, said the cost of housing seems to have an impact on other costs.

“Groceries aren’t exactly cheap either,” he said. “As soon as rental and housing prices go up, everything else seems to go up with it.”

A friend of his recently visited Terrace to see if that might be a place worth considering for a move and he has heard others talking about relocating to Powell River.

“A lot of people are talking about moving out that way,” Willison said. The Sunshine Coast community offers many of the outdoor pursuits found in Squamish, he said, but with a more affordable cost of living.

“It does feel to me right now like unless I, for some reason, come into money like an inheritance or something, it does seem there’s no way I’m going to be able to buy a house in Squamish,” he said. “It’s a bit of a shame, but that’s just how it goes, I guess.”

Dr. Sal Melli, one of the owners of Euphoria Natural Health, came from Toronto about six years ago and said it’s tough to compete for housing with people who have sold homes in Vancouver and are relocating to Squamish. While Squamish is a tough market for first-time buyers or renters, it seems like a bargain to people who have pocketed the profits from a house in the city.

“I don’t see things improving at all, especially the rent and availability,” he said.

Sarah Johnson, who owns Wild and Heart, considers herself lucky. As a hands-on proprietor, she is in the store most days and available to cover staff shortages. While some businesses have had to compete by upping their hourly rates, Johnson’s competitive advantage is flexibility.

“I’m really flexible with my scheduling, so it’s kind of up to them when they want to work,” she said. “It might be a different story if I was trying to bring in a store manager or someone full-time.”

Bryan Delwo, assistant manager of Kal Tire in Squamish worked previously at Kal Tire in Abbotsford, and he notices the difference. Not being able to fill staff positions means waiting times increase and he can’t give the level of customer support he would ideally like. It might mean missed opportunities, he said, although talking with competitors and suppliers indicates everyone is in much the same boat.

While housing’s impact on employee recruitment and retention may be on the lips of business operators when they commiserate on the sidewalk, Kate Mulligan, the economic development officer for the District of Squamish, noted that it didn’t top the survey her department undertakes every year.

With slightly more than 100 responses to this year’s questionnaire, the top concern among businesses was “Pressure from competition” (76 per cent of respondents), followed by marketing (63 per cent) and “Business cash flow/financing,” with “Finding employees” fourth, at 60 per cent.

The District, she said, is confronting the problem from multiple angles, including an ongoing affordable housing program, community amenity contributions in rezonings that ensure rental housing and business-specific initiatives to help employers navigate the employment market in town. The District is also looking at the impacts of short-term rentals, like Airbnb or VRBO, on housing availability.

“I’m very optimistic,” said Mulligan. “I think there are lots of things that the District and its partners in economic development are currently doing to try to create a balance between supply and demand.”

Linda Glenday, chief administration officer for Squamish, cited a planned affordable housing complex on Buckley Avenue as a very tangible project the District is undertaking. The project is in a preliminary stage, but there could be as many as 72 units when completed, though Glenday stressed the plans are not firmed up.

Employers, meanwhile, are using word of mouth, social media and old-fashioned signs in windows to try to attract prospective employees. Moir, the restaurateur, doesn’t miss a chance to pitch his openings.“We are looking for staff if you want to put that in your article,” he said.