B.C. looks to standardize multiplex designs as latest fix to housing crisis
todayinbc.com
todayinbc.com
- Unification of residential zones into a single zone with (marginally) higher density, which could make it easier to further increase density in the future
- BC Ministry of Housing has brought forth legislation to upzone housing in concentric rings of decreasing density around transit stations, with allowable minimums up to 20 stories in the nearest ring, where in many cases single family homes currently stand.
- Senakw development: native land still under control by a local native tribe is not subject to housing bylaws and is now being developed into several large towers (without parking requirements!)
- An even larger development has been proposed using the same land rights on the Jericho lands just west of Senakw, which proposes around 10,000 new homes and a new subway station which would count as another transit station for nearby development of what is currently extremely underutilized land.
- This new BC special, although I’ve heard it may not be automatically applicable to Vancouver because Vancouver has special privileges to enforce its own building code (?)
More details on the Senakw development are available from the Squamish Nation's website: https://senakw.com/
It would be interesting if the standardized buildings could somewhat be pre-fabbed offsite, I would imagine that would significantly reduce building costs. That doesn’t fix the problem where a single city sized lot in Vancouver costs over 1.5 million dollars, but if you ammortize that over 3 separate dwellings the land cost becomes more affordable for professionals.
It's not a problem shuttling them up to an hour each way per day from their home to the site (and back), at least before efficiency improvements get overshadowed by the commuting overhead.
And yeah, pre-cutting tasks to e.g. prep cable terminations for outlets, outlet holes in drywall, floor tiles/panels to fit perfectly, etc., should not be a problem to substantially automate in a factory, thanks to modern technology for mapping/ensuring mounting dimensions are spot-on as is required for all pre-cut things to correctly line up. Have the factory robots sort the pre-cut parts for shipping such that they get pulled from the pallet/crate in the order they're added (mounted) to the house, maybe with a QR code and/or RFID-sticker to search/check nothing got mixed up. Combine the tag with e.g. the cable-end-protector-cap that's stuck to the cable ends to protect the bare copper and also protect other things from getting poked/scratched, until the cable is pulled through the walls/conduits to the termination boxes. Check at each end if the cable belongs there, right before peeling the cap off for reuse at the factory (just a fresh sticky bandage or such needed).
Running such an approach ought to yield a lot of experience in the automation/organizing/design-for-manufacturing "residential/office construction engineering/architecture" areas, which is naturally local talent due to site visits and hands-on (factory) process debugging needs.
Thus having that talent should be a competitive advantage due to it making further projects like it significantly easier, massively reducing the burden of "construction takes time and skilled manpower" on their city's desires to outpace competitors with advanced city/neighborhood design: keeping up with demand for walkable-distance dwellings around new transit stations cuts the time-until-ROI for that transit infrastructure. And more critically, it speeds the feedback loop for the design of such infrastructure, as newly constructed (according to updated designs) transit stations in places without "dense city" in the way quickly rise to nominal (pedestrian) utilization. 2 years vs. 5 years changes whether after 10 years you build the second generation, or already know how the 4th generation performed. Of course these are just what-if speculative examples to illustrate how impactful/enabling some of these changes/approaches can be.
Isn’t it going to be BC-wide (except for towns below 5,000 people, or where the vacancy rate is above 5%) that every lot will now “as of right” allow for a minimum of 3 dwelling units per lot, growing to 4 when the lot is a certain size, and then up to 6 if the lot is even larger?
To me that’s a big step up (3-6x current density!).
The other thing that I think a lot of people are glossing over is the requirement for the municipalities to plan and rezone for 20 years of growth every 5 years. No more having to apply for rezoning for a project that is in line with what the cities have planned.
It gets a lot more complicated when you delve into bands such that the Tsawwassen First Nation who have new modern treaties and don't fall under the Indian Act but they are more of an exception.
Huh, interesting. Is the plan that people who live there just won't have cars?
People here might own cars, but it’s up to them to find parking and pay for it themselves, rather than building it into the cost of buying/renting for everyone in these buildings—building without minimums means much cheaper building costs. It’s working in other cities where it’s being deployed and is a great way to incentivize cities to invest in car alternatives.
Does that mean at least 20 stories of the building won't be permitted?
Or does it mean that buildings up to and including 20 stories can't be rejected with "too dense" as the reason given to the permit-requester?
Technically below-grade: The Vancouver Special originated as a hack in zoning bylaws, whereby any floor 18" below grade was as a "basement" and didn't count towards the floor area limit, allowing larger houses than were otherwise permitted.
Nonetheless, my point stands. Bigger than Texas, a sixth the population, yet a housing crisis. I’m sure there are good reasons - like the Rockies - and managing not to sprawl is commendable, but still: surreal.
The Squamish Nation's bet is essentially: economics (demand) should drive development, not legacy urban planning and legacy zoning and bylaws.
This is testing an important hypothesis IMO. It's 10 acres of prime downtown real estate in one of the most expensive markets in the world. So if this wasn't self-governed indigenous land, the experiment would never be allowed to happen.
A cluster of 11 towers, some over 50 storeys... A good outcome is not guaranteed, so grab your popcorn, Vancouver. My fingers are crossed for them.
OTOH, thousands of much-needed rental homes will become available in the center of the city. That positive outcome seems highly likely.
Very little has changed since I first came to Vancouver 20 years ago - limited geography (mountains north, ocean west, US border south); desirable location (most moderate climate in the country, stunning natural beauty, closest to Asia); lots of international press as "most livable city"; low density zoning right next to downtown; etc. The issue was not /as/ bad back then, but the "Crack Shack or Mansion?" online quiz, wherein you had to guess if a house was a drug den or a $1,000,000+ property was 13 years ago. Affordability has been an issue for decades.
Governments have gone through the steps of limiting foreign ownership of housing and AirBnB, but changing zoning is new. Probably because of NIMBYs and established homeowners not wanting to lose their newfound real estate wealth. However the cost-of-living increases in food prices and interest rates post-pandemic are making affordability the top concern in the country, and the federal government's polling numbers are in the toilet.
The provincial BC NDP are very, very popular and have been in power for several years, so I think this is really a sign that the tides are turning IRT polling and popular opinion. Maybe boomer and gen-X homeowners are starting to realize that an extra $500,000 in home value isn't worth your kids staying in the basement into their 30s, an insurmountable gap between wages and housing, or homelessness (there's also the substance debate, which is beyond this news.)
There's a brilliant YouTube channel called "About Here" which I highly recommend for those interested in the socioeconomic challenges facing Vancouver.
The cruel irony is that a place so commonly lauded as "most livable" has so many issues that make living here difficult.
- a lot of people (especially those who have owned their homes since the 70s or 80s) probably don't want to rebuild or have a year of construction in their yards as they approach retirement
- if everyone turns their single home into 2-4plexes, the supply will meet demand and prices will plummet massively, especially in the outer suburbs like Maple Ridge, Langley, or Tsawwassen that would otherwise be less desirable. Classic game theory.
- transit hasn't matched growth and big parts of the region are underserved. Surrey, the largest suburb and soon to have more population than the City of Vancouver, has 4 stations on the SkyTrain system. Vancouver has 20. Burnaby, the next suburb (yet less than half the population of Surrey), has 11.
- Both Uber and transit have some issues, like the requirement for commercial drivers licenses to drive for Uber/Lyft (an attempt to moderate the outrage from taxi drivers) and perceived safety issues on transit (my own brother-in-law has been assaulted on the train)
It really is the perfect storm of a city that is growing way faster than was ever envisioned; the opioid crisis (related but tangential from this discussion); external influence from "most livable" lists and expatriate investments; high immigration with no limit on where you settle (section 6 of the Charter) making most people go to Vancouver or Toronto; the geography of the area; and the politics of the region being one of the few places in the country where the 3 largest parties all have a chance in many ridings (meaning more promises and concessions made.)
2. If we're playing game theory (and we should be) then this is wrong, as it will drive up Vancouver land prices (since that's the area people want to live) and push down suburb land. NIMBYism is a whole bunch of localities playing the exact same exclusionary game, so if this was something that was a main point of contention for the nimbys Van proper nimby's would be in favor, which they mostly aren't. Maple Ridge, Langley, etc. don't have a say at the local NIMBY level over Vancouver and so wasn't really considered in my claim because they don't matter. If everyone was operating on game theory contingent on this idea, Vancouver could approve this, collect their higher land prices and Langley could stay low density and it would solve a lot of this housing problem and each city would rightly have no say in what the other did. Van is still against so caring about the housing price in Langley obviously isn't driving their NIMBYism.
3. Transit and uber issues affect pricing dynamics in the suburbs, which I wasn't talking about. Your original post mentions Vancouver, not the suburbs.
For 2 and 3, my top-level comment used "Vancouver" to refer to the entire GVRD or metro area (West Van through White Rock and east to Maple Ridge and Langley) because I don't expect outsiders on HN to know the extent of amalgamation. Very few would know Coquitlam compared to Vancouver, and I hoped the description of the geography made that more clear. In other comments I have referred to the CoV specifically, as I did above.
The reasons for someone in Kits not wanting zoning changes may be a little different compared to someone in Poco, but the same "screw you, got mine" sentiment remains. And these are some of the most dynamic constituencies both federally and provincially, and turnout always favours older people (more likely to own property) so trepidation about anything to make housing "more affordable" is read as reducing their own worth or beneficial status quo.
Metro Vancouver already is one of the most congested regions in North America. There is a severe health care shortage with more than a million people struggling to access family doctors and specialists. The region also routinely experiences drought conditions and water usage advisories during spring and summer months.
The municipalities understand these factors limiting growth, but the province and federal government seem to believe we can grow the population forever. It’s a disaster in the making, in my opinion as a long time resident.
It’s one thing if you disbelieve your government is prepared to solve these problems, but the difficulties of managing a growing population are neither novel nor intractable
> It’s a disaster in the making, in my opinion as a long time resident.
Unaffordable housing is already a disaster.
Plots of land cost millions yet there are several gaping holes in the Skytrain network. Major thoroughfares like Hwy 1 exits get incomplete maintenance. Locals who went to UBC, SFU, or BCIT can only afford to live in deep Maple Ridge or Cloverdale and then pay our gas prices for the privilege of working in the CoV. The same CoV that has single family density like you'd expect in Surrey.
It's a mess, and big solutions like expanding the West Coast Express to all-day service with a few more stations so that suburbs can reliably grow into the valley aren't even being mentioned. One level of government says "$amount of immigration" and it's up to the province (or delegated to municipalities) to try to adapt. Meanwhile the residents of those municipalities resist any changes to density or zoning.
And as a result, we get the mess we're in now.
This seems to be the closest one could get to do nothing while still technically doing something. You do not need to hire an expensive consultant. We have been building duplexes and triplexes and quadplexs for decades.
This is going to be some lightly disguised graft mark my words. They will spend hundreds of thousands on this consultant to produce a plan of whicht they will make 10 and then forget about when the next charlatan or conman comes into town.
You know what they really need is a monorail.
The government is also forcing rezoning around transit stations and bus exchanges for much higher densities with heights of between 8-20 stories (or higher based on municipal planning) allowed within 800m.
While not a monorail there is a 16km elevated train extension going on in the suburbs