BC Provincial Government Housing Policies 2023

[GMD]

Originally Posted by Firebrand

I think what Woodward is implying here is that its schools have not been catching up with the amount of housing that's being built (SD35 has the most portables per capita than any other school district, though SD36 has more by raw numbers). I do think that the BC NDP would need to put more capital funding on more schools and expanding existing ones rather than implementing half-measures like adding more portables, some of which are not air conditioned.

That being said, Woodward has been incredibly obtuse on denying multiplexes next to a skytrain station, yet he is fine having two high rises next to farmland.

I guess the question is if the new legislation results in more people living in Langley, or fewer. Obviously, the legislation doesn't manufacture any new people, although it is possible that if it succeeds in improving affordability, there will be more migration to BC (both interprovincial and international).

This will be offset by the legislation creating more opportunities for people to live closer in to Vancouver than Langley. Right now it is the lack of housing closer in that drives (not all but) many people to live in Langley.

How the various factors play out I guess we will see, but I do think that many people are confusing the impact of a localized or spot rezoning with the impact of a general rezoning and imagining a flood of people that won't materialize, especially in outlying areas.

[Bcasey25raptor]

David Eby is hands down the best premier BC has had in my life time and it isn't even close

[GlassCity]

Thanks for creating this thread. Whether you support it or not, this is a monumental change in BC's planning framework, a generational shift, and it will be fascinating to see it unfold. Personally, I'm tremendously excited for it, not only because it will help relieve pressure on housing prices but also because it unlocks our ability to let our wildest urbanist dreams run true.

This has been all I've been able to think about since the legislation was first introduced, so I hope I can indulge myself a bit here and respond to some older posts in the thread. I have other thoughts of my own, but I'll save them for later to avoid being too too annoying.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Sheba

I'm more curious what will happen outside the CoV. I'm not sure how this will work with some of the Canada Line stations in Richmond - between the needs of the airport and the ground condition I can't see them being able to build very tall there.

White Rock is going to have a conniption and I wouldn't be surprised if they want to have the bus loop moved so they don't have to build. They may even want most of the buses to stop at the S Surrey Park & Ride (which looks like it's on ALR so no towers there).

Then there's West Van...

Regarding Richmond, it'll be similar to your ALR quote. The legislation will be overriden by other legislation (in Richmond's case, the federal Airport Zoning Regulation) which would adjust the practical maximum to 5 FAR and 150 feet or whatever the height max is there. Same with ground condition, although I understand Richmond has been getting bolder and bolder projects, with tanked underground parkades, as the market becomes increasingly able to absorb these costs.

In general, what this legislation does is set a "minimum maximum" that cities have to ALLOW - so they can allow more, but they have to allow a minimum of say 5 FAR and 20 storeys, but if a developer chooses to build less than that (say for practical reasons like ground conditions) then that's okay too. I know there's been a lot of anxiety both among local governments and developers that these are mandates, but the whole point is to deregulate housing development, not add a constraint from the other direction.

The specific language in the legislation is

Despite section 479 (GlassCity note: this section permits zoning) but subject to an exemption set out in the regulations, a local government must not exercise the powers under that section to prohibit or restrict a density of use, or a size or dimension of buildings or other structures, set out in the regulations in relation to land that is in a transit-oriented area and zoned to permit

(a) any residential use, or

(b) a prescribed use other than residential use.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Changing City

There seem to be several side effects of that. There will be a significant group of very pissed homeowners, who aren't going to take kindly to paying much higher taxes. It's not like there will be enough developer interest (or money) to buy up every developable lot in a short time - there will be thousands of properties affected. Ironically, the higher values would make site assembly more expensive, so it doesn't ensure any newly developed homes are as affordable as they might be. It presumably gives owners who do sell, a windfall non-taxable capital gain (as happens on Oak and Cambie, for example). And taxes for the homes outside the station zones should fall, as property taxes are a zero-sum game - if there's more money coming from one group of owners, the others will pay less.

I'm not gonna pretend I have any idea of how this will affect assessments, but I think regardless of what happens to them there is always a premium that developers have to pay to convince owners to sell them their properties. Whether this legislation came in, or cities upzoned individual sites unilaterally, or a developer decided to just go for it and submit a rezoning/OCP amendment on a non-TOD site, I'd guess the price they'd pay for those lots would be the same under any scenario.

The difference as I see it would be that those TOD opportunities would no longer be a unique privilege, so the owner loses the leverage of "you either develop my lot or no lot" and the premium becomes just one of inconvenience, not scarcity too. Through this mechanism, and an overall supply increase, newly developed units should go down in price.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by logan5

So does anybody know if there's a choice to build strata or rental, or is this another push towards rental only? Rental only at 3 FSR wouldn't attract much development.

I disagree with chowhou's interpretation of the legislation on this, so there'll hopefully be more info on this in the regulations to come in the next few weeks. My take is that the legislation is agnostic on this, but Kahlon said during the committee debate on the bills that cities will still be able to zone for rental. You can imagine some cities doing this to avoid pre-zoning and maintaining the leverage to extract benefits from developers through a rezoning-to-strata process. This speaks to the legislation's language on not prohibiting a density or building form (i.e. turning down a development because it's too dense or tall), which theoretically leaves the door open to a rejection based on tenure.

Kahlon's quote (from the Bill 44 debate) https://www.leg.bc.ca/documents-data...mmitteeA-Blues:

A. Walker: It's a power that was given to local governments — I'll say recently, in the last six years or so — with the ability to zone for rental housing. As one of the classes is the ability to have affordable housing and rentals are obviously going to be important, will these changes preclude the ability for a council to zone a property or a region for rental only?

Hon. R. Kahlon: The answer is no.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by chowhou

On the other hand, it might be considered "reasonable" to require one unit to be below market rental or something (as seen in the Vancouver multiplex plan). Like you said, it remains to be seen.

With regard to TOD, how inclusionary zoning will work remains to be seen, as currently outright inclusionary zoning (where you just put in your zone that X% of units must be affordable) is illegal in BC, so the way municipalities secure inclusionary units is through the rezoning leverage. Bill 44 will make rezonings less and less common, so that tool will be less available. Rumour is the Province will be coming out with separate legislation/regulation on inclusionary zoning some other time.

With regard to the new 3-6 unit/lot legislation, the actual language in the legislation says you cannot include affordability requirements as part of that, EXCEPT for the 6th unit in a 6-unit/lot (400m of frequent transit) situation.

There's a bunch of clauses quoting each other in the legislation that shows this so I won't quote all of them, but if you want to fact-check my interpretation you can start this trail from Section 481.5 here: https://www.leg.bc.ca/Pages/BCLASS-L...%2Fgov44-3.htm

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by logan5

Developers first choice to build is the CoV, so with so much land about to become available, we are going to see an explosion in population.

I've heard similar thoughts from others that this spells the decline of suburban growth in Metro Vancouver, but I'm not as convinced. I think it's reasonable to see Vancouver finally catch up to the pace of growth the quicker-growing suburban municipalities have been experiencing, and even exceed them, but not excessively so.

While I think it's true that in a deregulated housing environment Vancouver would be larger and outlying suburbs smaller, with the context we're in now I think we'll still see healthy growth in the suburbs. Housing will still stay cheaper in the suburbs, people who are overcrowded/living with parents in the suburbs could well want to stay there when getting their own place, other factors (processing times, costs, etc.) matter too, and other than the biggest players (and even then) a lot of developers tend to be regional in their porfolios, so South of Fraser developers will likely continue to focus most of their attention on it.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by logan5

Do BRT stations get the same treatment as Skytrain stations?



https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/tran...ning-finalized

This was brought up in the committee debate on Bill 47 (TOD) and Kahlon basically said they're still working on how to treat them (https://www.leg.bc.ca/documents-data...-House-Blues):

P. Milobar: The Mayors' Council on Regional Transportation, just on the 16th, passed some new high-speed corridors. Again, we fully support that. This is not about if they should or shouldn't be doing that. Obviously, we need to see transit continue to expand, especially in fast-growing urban areas.

One of the routes was Surrey to White Rock down King George Boulevard. That makes sense, just off the top of my head. Knowing some of the transportation corridors, as little as I do, within that area, that makes sense.

Obviously, some questions arise. White Rock, over the years, has not exactly had skyscrapers grow quickly. Would these provisions in Bill 47 on that new rapid route come into effect? If so, what would be the height minimums within the White Rock area?

Hon. R. Kahlon:I appreciate the member's question around BRT.

There's still work that needs to happen with TransLink. TransLink doesn't have clear definitions of how they define BRT yet because it doesn't exist. The work is happening right now with TransLink on how they want to define it, how we can come to an agreement on definitions. Then that'll be something that gets considered with regs sometime in the future.

But the BRT doesn't exist right now, so it was a challenge to put it in legislation until that work is done.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by GMD

I guess the question is if the new legislation results in more people living in Langley, or fewer. Obviously, the legislation doesn't manufacture any new people, although it is possible that if it succeeds in improving affordability, there will be more migration to BC (both interprovincial and international).

This will be offset by the legislation creating more opportunities for people to live closer in to Vancouver than Langley. Right now it is the lack of housing closer in that drives (not all but) many people to live in Langley.

How the various factors play out I guess we will see, but I do think that many people are confusing the impact of a localized or spot rezoning with the impact of a general rezoning and imagining a flood of people that won't materialize, especially in outlying areas.

Agreed. Similar to my earlier post, I see this legislation increasing growth overall, cause in addition to latent internal demand there are plenty of people from outside the region/province/country who'd love to live here (including in an apartment) if they had that option.

Woodward's complaints about the effect of just-approved greenfield plans are reasonable I think, but also I don't think should take too much additional work to rerun the numbers with new housing units and students generated and see if additional school sites need to be incorporated into the plans.

Also agreed that people are confusing this with spot zoning, cause that's all they've ever known. I do expect growth to increase overall, but it won't be an immediate flood. We're, by design, gonna have more room for growth than "required" (Bill 44 says every 5 years you have to zone enough land for 20 years of growth, although I think most people underestimate how much demand is really out there), so not all pre-zoned lands are immediately going to be redeveloped.

This is a huge change but people need to calm down just a touch - SSMU legalization has a June 30, 2024 deadline before any permits even start coming in, let alone construction. OCPs and Zoning Bylaws have to be updated by January 1, 2025. We're not gonna have cranes dotting the land like pump jacks.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

In general, what this legislation does is set a "minimum maximum" that cities have to ALLOW - so they can allow more, but they have to allow a minimum of say 5 FAR and 20 storeys, but if a developer chooses to build less than that (say for practical reasons like ground conditions) then that's okay too. I know there's been a lot of anxiety both among local governments and developers that these are mandates, but the whole point is to deregulate housing development, not add a constraint from the other direction.

Oh I know. I have no doubt that some people will think that anywhere near a Skytrain station a cluster of towers is going to start construction any day now. The reality is that developers will be allowed to build taller in those locations - but there's no guarantee they will (for reasons you've already mentioned).

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I've heard similar thoughts from others that this spells the decline of suburban growth in Metro Vancouver, but I'm not as convinced. I think it's reasonable to see Vancouver finally catch up to the pace of growth the quicker-growing suburban municipalities have been experiencing, and even exceed them, but not excessively so.

I'm also not convinced. While yes plenty of people do want to live in the CoV, there are also plenty of people who want to live in other areas of Metro Van. What all this legislation is doing is forcing Nimbys to tolerate more density across the entire region, and if they don't want to then they'll have to move away. They won't get to drown out public hearings anymore (see pretty much any news on Jericho and Sen̓áḵw - the conniptions over those have been 'interesting').

[logan5]

It's no coincidence that Metrotown and Brentwood are going gangbusters and they just happen to be near the Vancouver border. The majority of people want to be as close to the city as possible. I fully expect that the Nanaimo/29th Ave/Joyce Station corridor will grow at least as fast, if not faster than Metrotown. Same for the Renfrew/Rupert corridor.

There are 16 Skytrain stations (outside the dt peninsula that is already built up) in the CoV which will each have high density development built around them, including Broadway. Next is Burnaby with 11. I fully expect Vancouver will easily be the fastest growing municipality in the Metro in the next 2 decades. Vancouver is going to be transformed in a major way.

[csbvan]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

I've heard similar thoughts from others that this spells the decline of suburban growth in Metro Vancouver, but I'm not as convinced. I think it's reasonable to see Vancouver finally catch up to the pace of growth the quicker-growing suburban municipalities have been experiencing, and even exceed them, but not excessively so.

While I think it's true that in a deregulated housing environment Vancouver would be larger and outlying suburbs smaller, with the context we're in now I think we'll still see healthy growth in the suburbs. Housing will still stay cheaper in the suburbs, people who are overcrowded/living with parents in the suburbs could well want to stay there when getting their own place, other factors (processing times, costs, etc.) matter too, and other than the biggest players (and even then) a lot of developers tend to be regional in their porfolios, so South of Fraser developers will likely continue to focus most of their attention on it.

If developing in Vancouver is more desirable, it will be more expensive and suburban development will remain attractive as a cheaper alternative. Add in the fact that land consolidation is much easier in the suburbs (buying an existing 3 storey strata or 5 single family lots is quite tough compared to buying a single strip mall or car dealership).

Also, City of Vancouver is more restricted on what you can develop. For example, Broadway Corridor only gives the highest densities for rental housing. No reason this will change as a result of the provincial legislation. In fact, I expect City of Vancouver to implement this legislation in a way that continues to allow for density only with big trade-offs in terms of rental and/or affordable housing.

[csbvan]

Originally Posted by logan5

It's no coincidence that Metrotown and Brentwood are going gangbusters and they just happen to be near the Vancouver border. The majority of people want to be as close to the city as possible. I fully expect that the Nanaimo/29th Ave/Joyce Station corridor will grow at least as fast, if not faster than Metrotown. Same for the Renfrew/Rupert corridor.

There are 16 Skytrain station in the CoV which will each have high density development built around them. Next is Burnaby with 11. I fully expect Vancouver will easily be the fastest growing municipality in the Metro in the next 2 decades. Vancouver is going to be transformed in a major way.

Burnaby builds thin straps of density. A ton of single-family land just opened up for higher density development near Metrotown, Brentwood, Holdom, Sterling, Royal Oak, Edmonds, etc. Has Burnaby fooled people by building a few 80 storey towers?? Have people here been to Burnaby's skytrain stations?! The density falls off a cliff very quickly. After that, you couldn't even build a bloody laneway house. Burnaby, like every city in the region with Skytrain is about to change dramatically from their status quo.

[csbvan]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

This was brought up in the committee debate on Bill 47 (TOD) and Kahlon basically said they're still working on how to treat them (https://www.leg.bc.ca/documents-data...-House-Blues):

If we build true BRT, there's no reason that it shouldn't be treated as Rapid Transit.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by csbvan

If we build true BRT, there's no reason that it shouldn't be treated as Rapid Transit.

Generally agree, but I wouldn't be too disappointed if they knocked the density down a touch (for example, within 200m, it's 5 FAR for SkyTrain and 4 for bus exchanges, maybe BRT gets 4.5) and/or removed the 3rd (400-800m) ring and kept it at a 400m distance.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Re: the suburbs, I'm betting on a dipolar system - Whalley coming into its own as a downtown core and the cheaper (albeit less desirable) alternative to the CBD, Vancouver's centre of gravity slowly drifting southeast toward Commercial-Broadway, and Metrotown serving as a high-density bedroom community between the two centres.

[csbvan]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

Generally agree, but I wouldn't be too disappointed if they knocked the density down a touch (for example, within 200m, it's 5 FAR for SkyTrain and 4 for bus exchanges, maybe BRT gets 4.5) and/or removed the 3rd (400-800m) ring and kept it at a 400m distance.

Yes, I think that would be reasonable. Ultimately, I think it needs to be treated differently than a bus exchange if we are talking separated lanes and platforms.

[Changing City]

I think it will throw up some unexpected changes in Vancouver. Up to now the main source of townhouses in Vancouver have been from the Cambie Corridor Plan - so far over 1,500 approved in 61 schemes, many of them built in the past 10 years, and another 14 projects with over 400 townhouses currently approved as rezonings, or submitted. Most locations (like along Oak) are beyond the 800m ring, but some will, in a year or two, be locations for potential 3 FSR 6-storey buildings without a rezoning, and with no need for 100% parking. I can see nothing further coming forward on those sites for a couple of years, and a few existing projects might be put on ice.

Most of the potential 5 FSR 200m zone rings and the 4 FSR 400m rings along West Broadway already allow higher density than that through a Broadway Plan rezoning, but it's the further, lower density 400 to 800m parts north and south of Broadway that might see some movement. The apartment zones already allow some rental redevelopment, but it will need the City's policies to protect rental units and tenants, or there would be a significant possibility of older Fairview and Kitsilano rental buildings currently around 1.5 FSR being redeveloped at 3 FSR as condos. I wouldn't think the Provincial government, or City Council would be happy with that outcome.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by csbvan

Burnaby builds thin straps of density. A ton of single-family land just opened up for higher density development near Metrotown, Brentwood, Holdom, Sterling, Royal Oak, Edmonds, etc. Has Burnaby fooled people by building a few 80 storey towers?? Have people here been to Burnaby's skytrain stations?! The density falls off a cliff very quickly. After that, you couldn't even build a bloody laneway house. Burnaby, like every city in the region with Skytrain is about to change dramatically from their status quo.

Looking closer ay the Burnaby stations, you will see that the Provincial mandate is made redundant by bolder land use policies already in place, or the station area has a lot of industrial land or park land around it.

Patterson and Metrotown for example are already covered by the Metrotown Plan, with a large part of the radius being Central Park. Same situation for Brentwood and Gilmore. production Way is mostly industrial and park space, and a large chunk of potential development around Sperling is taken out by park space.

The 4 stations south of Broadway/City Hall along the Canada Line will get large bump in density over the current Cambie Corridor Plan, where there is mostly townhouse and rowhouse planned. The 6 stations along the Expo/ Millennium Lines starting from Broadway/Commerial to 29th Ave, Rupert Station etc, are pretty much blank slates surrounded by single family homes.

The potential around the Vancouver stations is much greater than anywhere else along the system.