Captain Lance & Chuckles

One inventive businessman was not content to tackle one emerging trend. He's got three on the go.

Lance Jervis-Read, known along Ontario's Rideau Canal System as Captain Lance of the tour boat "Chuckles," has become a developer/builder and has constructed two houses as unique rental properties. He is representative of the trend toward individuals without a real estate background entering the world of development when they are supposed to be "retired."

Through his two current business ventures, a Bed & Breakfast that he operates with his wife and Rideau Boat Tours, Jervis-Read also embodies a strong second trend—the movement to an active, income-generating third life after 65.

The third trend (technically a slowly re-emerging trend) concerns the style of adaptive/flexible-use building Jervis-Read is constructing.

Back in the late 1980's, interest in convertible housing began to increase, but awareness of Made-to-Convert homes, single-family houses that could easily be converted into two self-contained units, did not reach critical mass. Convertible housing slipped back into the shadows.

Jervis-Read had not heard about this concept and was not familiar with the term. His observations of a specific local housing need led him to create his own housing solution: two single-family homes, each divided into two self-contained suites to house two generations of one family.

"I built these houses as I feel there is a market out there for people [who want] to support their seniors," said Jervis-Read, whose research began with passengers on his Rideau Canal tour boat. "I meet an incredible number of people in their senior years, including a son paying C$3500 per month so his mother can live in two rooms with two meals a day—a cash cow [arrangement]—and it infuriated me."

Jervis-Read found there were only a few places in the area where adult children and their parents could pool their resources and rent a house together, but live independently in completely separate suites. This discovery put a hammer in the hand of this resourceful boat-builder and he set out to construct two very special houses on adjacent properties in Smith Falls, a small community outside Ottawa. Reportedly, the municipality classified them as "residential with granny suite," a term that may be considered ageist, even though approval was appreciated.

Each house is zoned as a single-family dwelling and looks like a typical residence from the street. The air-conditioned interiors are divided into two units designed to protect the independence and privacy of each generation:

• an upper self-contained, 3-bedroom suite with 2 bathrooms, laundry facilities and a downstairs rec room, which could also be shared by the lower unit, and

• a second private, main-floor unit with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a laundry room

The biggest problem? Jervis-Read wants this project to provide him with rental income equivalent to a pension. The buildings have generated a lot of local interest, but many want to take advantage of low interest rates and buy one of the houses. At this point, Jervis-Read does not want to diverge from his plan to generate long-term cash-flow, but he is considering rent-to-own possibilities. The projected monthly rent per house is C$2200 plus utilities.

"[The two houses] are not quite finished, but they should be in about a month if I can get back to it," explained Jervis-Read after a busy summer as Captain Lance. "The houses are on hold as we do the B & B and boat tours. The Ottawa Citizen article gave us a great boost. We're flying a million miles an hour—the B & B and the boat tours. We'll hit 1000 [passengers] in a few weeks, which is triple what we did last year. A tremendous life. We are well on the way to success this year to make up for the bad tourism years [Canada's] gone through."

About the rental houses, Jervis-Read reports: "We have people inquiring all the time. We are working steadily through a list of positive and negatives, but the rental business is very tricky. We expect to have our first tenant in a month to six weeks."

Until then Jervis-Read is busy with "Chuckles," his lovingly-restored 1940 lobster boat. He captains up to 8 passengers a trip on two daily cruises between Chaffeys Lock and Jones Fall along an historically-preserved stretch of the 175-year-old Rideau Canal, which was originally built as a defense against a possible American attack of Canada's national capital, Ottawa.