Up to 293,000 new homes possible from landmark policies: BC government

Construction progress on the first phase of Gilmore Place, as of October 4, 2023. (Kenneth Chan/Daily Hive)

Landmark policies introduced through new legislation by the provincial government this fall could potentially generate hundreds of thousands of new additional homes across British Columbia.

More specifically, under the optimal scenarios, the legislation for small-scale, multi-family homes on single-family lots across BC and the legislation for transit-oriented development at over 100 major public transit hubs could catalyze a combined total of 216,000 to 293,000 new additional homes over the next 10 years by 2034.

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This includes more than 130,000 new homes from enabling up to six homes on single-family lots and over 100,000 new homes generated by the transit-oriented development legislation.

During a BC Chamber of Commerce event on Thursday, Premier David Eby said the provincial government’s contracted economists show there could be a net gain of roughly 250,000 units, based on the modelling done by comparing similar policy changes in other jurisdictions — such as in Auckland in New Zealand, where 20,000 new additional units were gained over the five years after 2016-enacted policy changes.

In comparison to BC’s existing housing supply, there are currently about two million homes across the province, including 867,000 single-family detached houses, 903,000 townhouses, rowhouses, and duplexes, and 222,000 apartments.

In 2022, about 51,400 new homes were registered in BC, including over 9,000 single-family detached houses and over 42,000 multi-unit homes.

“The most controversial, the most radical, the idea that people who use transit should actually be able to afford to live near the rapid transit, near the frequent transit, transit-oriented development in our province,” said Eby.

“[We’re] making sure that we’re actually building homes near those transit stations that come from government from taxpayers investing literally billions of dollars, so when we’re building out Surrey-Langley SkyTrain, we’re making sure that we have the density to support that transit. That is the law in British Columbia, that is the minimum standard.”

The provincial government is also requiring municipal governments to eliminate public hearings for rezonings that already follow the prescriptions of the official community plan, and helping municipalities improve their permitting processes.

Individual municipal governments are also being required to abide to the established targets for new housing reaching the completion and occupancy stage under the Housing Supply Act. The first 10 cities under the legislation are required to push 60,000 new homes to such a stage by 2028, with about half of this total coming from the City of Vancouver alone. The provincial government has plans to eventually expand the Housing Supply Act to up to 47 cities.

While the provincial government’s new legislations, which require municipal governments to adjust their bylaws by the established deadlines in 2024, opens up the technical possibility of more housing supply by reforming zoning, there are major headwinds relating to high borrowing costs for land acquisitions and construction financing, growing costs for materials and equipment due to inflation, the skilled labour shortage, and the forecast of national economic uncertainty emerging out of the pandemic.

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