@Jeremy Heaman
Fascinating find! I'm not going to lie, I drank the Kool-aid and took a deep dive into the program and potential opportunity. Look for my bolded sections to see my summaries.
The rural path has a very focused lens https://www.alberta.ca/assets/.... Below are some of the conditions from the Community Designation for those communities who wish to participant in the program for arriving immigrants.
Interested communities fill out a Community Designation Application form. Additional points will be awarded for communities with less than 10,000 residents.
- Community has an organization/entity whose primary function is economic development for the community that will serve as the community designation lead and coordinator for the Rural Renewal Stream.
- Community has an Economic Development Plan.
- Community has support letters from town/municipality council(s).
This key thing is how the rural path is channeling applicants and identify the conditions for successful communities. The need for an Economic Development Plan alludes to a certain level of municipal or regional governance which is capable of receiving and integrating arriving migrants into the region. I have included the Taber Economic Plan which gives you a vibe of what the government might be shooting for and further confirmation of this alignment for entrepreneurial investment through new comers can be found in the actual Taber document itself which I have included in the table below.
Here is where the real estate side of things come into play. Taber is a Municipal District but it has paired with Vauxhall which is a small town that has seen decreasing population to the tune of -5% growth. If I had to guess, given the absence of economic data, I imagine these regions have some level of industry which is slowly eroding out due to population loss and could be candidate locations of the rural stream. As a property investor, you would really need to do your homework to ensure the identified regions would see arriving immigrants or else you could be sinking money into an house that will shortly find it's way into an ever shrinking town or hamlet. Grand Cache is a great example of this as the town recently loss it's status in 2018 due to population decline. The other consideration would be to evaluate how much time and effort you want to expend as a land lord who would need to drive to potential remote locations to show the property, manage tenants needs, and perform general maintenance. One other aspect to consider is this program is provincially supported and the next provincial election is in 2023. Pending on what happens, you could be investing in a program that doesn't' carry much longevity if the next party to take control has a different perspective on migrant attraction.If possible, I would try to find more recent Economic Development Plans that point directly at the rural program and then hunt for a real policy document which outlines how the region would work with arriving migrants to support them.
If you do pursue this option, I would be genuinely interested to see how it shakes out and hope you find success as the amount of research you have done Is no small feat.
Grand Cache
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.taber.ca/home/show...
Vauxhall
http://town.vauxhall.ab.ca
https://www.point2homes.com/CA...
