Vancouver's New Social Housing Initiative
Up to 50% reduction in the time it takes for the city to approve housing
Last Wednesday (September 18, 2024), Vancouver announced a new initiative to promote the construction of mixed-income social housing.
Contact city council with your feedback on this motion!
Background
On December 7, 2022, Vancouver city councilor Christine Boyle brought forward a motion to streamline the construction of social housing in Vancouver. This motion passed unanimously with the support of ABC and Green councilors, as well as Mayor Ken Sim (vote #8912).
On March 20, 2024, Josh White was appointed to be the new General Manager of Planning, Urban Design and Sustainability, promising to streamline building regulations in Vancouver and comply with the new provincial land use legislation, which he called “the types of changes we would've wanted to make of our own volition.”
Now, we’re seeing one of those proposed changes. Vancouver’s Social Housing Initiative would authorize mixed-income social housing, supportive housing, and co-ops from 6-18 storeys throughout much of the city.
Benefits of this change
Social housing is typically 30% non-market, 70% low-end-of-market (cross-subsidizing the non-market housing). Jill Atkey and Thom Armstrong explain: Mixed-income developments are the most effective way of getting more non-profit homes built.
In addition to authorizing the housing, the proposal will streamline the process of building this housing substantially by removing the requirement for a rezoning. Currently, the timeline for new housing looks like this:
Inquiry (4 months)
Application (1-3 months)
Application Processing (12 months)
Development and Building Permit (12-18 months)
Building Vacated (4 months)
Construction (24-36 months)
The legislation would allow social housings to skip the first three steps.
This means that, of the estimated 33-41 months of process that it takes to get building approval in Vancouver, this proposal would remove 17-20 of them, or roughly half of the time.
This is important, because even though this housing does not make a profit, the builder still pays interest on loans, application fees, and pays staff to get through years of city processes. All of these obstacles result in less social housing in the city.
A comment from a recent provincial report:
Outright zoning for higher density should greatly increase the viability of non-market housing development across the province. In effect, instead of competing with commercial developers for a narrow range of developable sites, non-market developers will potentially have a much wider range of sites to choose from.
Uytae Lee of About Here has produced this excellent explainer on the initiative: