Approximately seventy-five per cent of the Tobacco Plains Indian Band members live off-reserve due to a lack of housing opportunities, however, that’s about to change.
The Tobacco Plains Indian Band continues to expand, celebrating the groundbreaking of a new subdivision on September 21, next door to their new Health and Administration Building.
The addition of this subdivision, which will feature 10 developed service lots, opens up the opportunity for growth. The Tobacco Plains Indian Band is made up of a few hundred people but only about 100, or 25 per cent of their members, live on the reserve.
“That’s a huge part of what this development allows us to do,” said Tobacco Plains manager of housing and infrastructure, Ryan Sarfeld.
“It allows members who have been, sort of forced to live off the reserve for a long time, the option to be able to move home … it really helps establish the community,” he added.
Currently, there are just under 30 homes on the reserve. Speaking to this, Sarfeld says the addition of 10 new lots to this community is very significant. This has been a long time coming for the Tobacco Plains. About 10 years ago, the Tobacco Plains started to look into the development of a subdivision to provide service lots for the community to settle on.
“The community itself hasn’t had any lots to develop any new housing on, so it was quite a hold back in the ability to grow the community,” said Sarfeld.
Over the years there has been some funding available to the Tobacco Plains for development, however, Sarfeld explained that one of the requirements for the funding was they must have service lots available. This prevented them from applying for certain grants, and thus delayed development.
Ten years ago, access to water supply was a large setback in developing this subdivision. For the next seven years, the community worked on developing a water system and two years ago they completed a full upgrade to their community water service.
This allowed for the development of the new Health and Administration building, as well as the development of these service lots.
Up until this point, it has been impractical for members to return to the Tobacco Plains and develop. The cost for an individual to start from scratch and not only build a home but develop a lot by running water, septic, and hydro to the site of development, Sarfeld says was extremely cost prohibitive.
“It allows the band to cost-effectively look at building new homes… they have choices, they have options now,” said Sarfeld.
“The community is really proud of the development we’ve been able to achieve of late,” he added. “It’s unfortunate that it’s taken so long. But it’s really nice to be able to have the ball rolling and the opportunity to really provide services to the community that they need.”