Rainbow Ridge_ Hooking Up to BC Hydro

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The Rainbow Ridge Affordable Housing Project will soon be connected to the electrical grid. Traffic on Beasley Road was reduced to a single lane last week while underground electrical service was installed beneath the road. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was also held recently, so Cortes Currents spoke with Sadhu Johnston, executive director of the Cortes Housing Society, for an update. Sadhu Johnston: "We’re sitting here at Rainbow Ridge in the community building, which is now complete. That really feels like a great accomplishment for this community." "We held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the building just a couple of weeks ago. It was a really fun event, with about 150 or 200 people attending. One of the children who will be living in that building over there cut the ribbon, along with our founder, Sandra Wood, Chief Kevin Peacey from the Klahoose Nation and Mark Vonesch, our Regional Director." "It was a really nice opportunity to stop and say, “Wow, we’ve got a community building here. We now have laundry facilities, offices, water and a guest bedroom. That feels like a real step forward." "We also have three residential buildings that are now out of the ground. One has been occupied since July 1, with two families living in it. It’s really great to have people living on the property after so many years of the community talking about using this land for housing." "Our second duplex is nearing completion, and the residents will be moving in on October 1. It will be our second occupied building and will also house two families. Each of these families has children, so in about three weeks, we’ll have five kids living on the property." "We’re across the street from the school, and the skate park, new multi-use courts and trail are all right here. It’s a great location for families and children." "The next building will open on January 1, 2027. There is a two-bedroom unit where a mother and her child will be living. We also have a one-bedroom unit that we are currently in the process of leasing." "There has been a lot of progress in getting these buildings up and occupied. For the most part, we’ve been operating on solar power and batteries because we haven’t had a BC Hydro connection." "We’re very enthusiastic about getting BC Hydro connected to the property before winter because the solar panels produce less power when it’s rainy and cloudy. We really want to go into the winter with BC Hydro connections to each of the homes." "As you can see from all the trenches around here, we’re very much in the middle of getting everything ready. We’ve just cut through Beasley Road and installed all the connections beneath it." "In the next few days, all the metering and connections should be completed. We’ll then be ready for BC Hydro to run the wires through the conduits and connect us to the grid."