A City of Vancouver pilot project for 10 tiny homes opened in late December 2023—after nearly three years. Speaking to the press about it last September, Vancouver City Councillor Pete Fry said he was frustrated about the delays and that the process was “the opposite of rapid.” By contrast, a similar project in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, which included 20 tiny homes, took less than 18 months to complete.
Councillor Fry shouldn’t have been surprised by the Vancouver project delays. As far as housing goes, that was a rapid response by the City.
Another example? There’s a development application in my neighbourhood that seeks to add one more unit of rental housing to an existing building in East Vancouver. If this one project is an indicator of how the City works, the housing crisis will be with us for a long time.
The Westerdale is a modest two-storey apartment building in Grandview-Woodland with 13 units. In October 2022, an application was sent to convert the building’s storage room into an additional rental unit. Two large signs went up announcing the application, despite the fact that the proposed change would not alter the building’s size or shape, or in any way affect the surrounding community. At most, it might add two more residents to the neighbourhood.
This application could have been reviewed and handled by a building inspector who is an expert in Vancouver’s Building Code. A conditional approval could have, perhaps, been completed in three months. This is not what happened.
More than a year later, in November 2023, the City sent the applicant a conditional letter of approval. Included in the letter was the “consideration to provide perimeter landscaping to enhance the public realm” and “provision of outdoor amenity space for units as possible.”
I find this fascinating. Adding an additional unit of housing should not require enhancing the outdoor public realm with perimeter landscaping. One more rental unit will not change the building form or structure, nor will it impact the landscaping. Making this request seems rather arbitrary to me, and only delays the creation of another unit of housing.
As well, requesting provision of an outdoor amenity space for this building seems bizarre. To me it indicates that City staff are somehow unaware that we are in the midst of a housing crisis. Anything and everything should be done to ensure as much affordable housing as possible can be created. Adding a new outdoor amenity would only add costs as well as ongoing maintenance to the building.
We need an all-hands-on-deck approach to the housing crisis. This one little project is a glaring example of the exact opposite. And while it’s just one example, I highly doubt it’s alone.
In October 2023, BC Premier David Eby unveiled new legislation that will increase the number of housing units permitted in all residential zones. The goal of the legislation is to alleviate the housing crisis in BC. The Province set a target of 28,900 new housing units in Vancouver by 2028.
According to a report released in September 2023, the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation found that if BC continues building homes at the current pace, by 2030 the province will still be short 610,000 units of housing needed to reach 2012’s level of affordability. Even with the new legislation, the best the NDP Government can project is an additional 293,000 units in the next 10 years.
That is a significant shortfall. It will take anything and everything we have to really address the housing crisis, and The Westerdale is a great example of how not to do things. Perhaps instead of adding unnecessary expectations, City staff should be empowered to make decisions that will speed up rather than delay the creation of more housing. Fingers crossed.
Vancouver’s housing crisis is going nowhere fast
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09.01.2024
A City of Vancouver pilot project for 10 tiny homes opened in late December 2023—after nearly three years. Speaking to the press about it last September, Vancouver City Councillor Pete Fry said he was frustrated about the delays and that the process was “the opposite of rapid.” By contrast, a similar project in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, which included 20 tiny homes, took less than 18 months to complete.
Councillor Fry shouldn’t have been surprised by the Vancouver project delays. As far as housing goes, that was a rapid response by the City.
Another example? There’s a development application in my neighbourhood that seeks to add one more unit of rental housing to an existing building in East Vancouver. If this one project is an indicator of how the City works, the housing crisis will be with us for a long time.
The Westerdale is a modest two-storey apartment building in Grandview-Woodland with 13 units. In........
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