These 10 friends are building a dream community in BC, and you can too
Vancouver’s unaffordability has led to many people seeking other, more affordable housing options. That’s meant groups of friends and communities have had to make hard decisions about how they’re going to stay together.
As the costs of living alone have remained high in this city, living with roommates has become the norm. But, as we shove multiple people into cramped apartments, the attractive fantasy of buying a plot of land to build a community with a group of friends isn’t actually that far off.
In Vancity’s new web series, “Building Together,” they follow a group of 10 friends as they convert a four-acre plot of land in Gibsons, BC, into a 10-lot community equipped with a garden, communal areas, and room for their growing families. You can catch up on Episode 1 and Episode 2 on Vancity’s YouTube channel.
We talk to Colleen O’Toole, one of the members of this group, and a professional engineer and project manager. We spoke about the project, where the group is at now, and the models they used so that you too can build something similar that fits your community goals.
From dream to reality
While many members of this group met through the University of British Columbia, O’Toole joined after moving to Vancouver in 2008 — after becoming a member of Fair Trade Vancouver (now the Canadian Fair Trade Network), and Engineers Without Borders in the hope of seeking out community.
“We were all like-minded and had shared values,” O’Toole tells Daily Hive. “Through all these adventures and trips [we took together], whether they were hikes or kayaking trips or biking trips, we started having discussions about how we were going to keep our community together when affordability is a major challenge.”
These discussions of their collective future led to members of the group looking casually at lots for their proposed community. It wasn’t until the mom of one of the group members sent their present lot listing that things started becoming very real very quickly.
“Maybe it was a month, but it was not long,” says O’Toole. “It was very [much like] scrambling for that first couple of weeks until [our offer] was accepted.”
Securing the mortgage
O’Toole tells us that their pitch for getting a mortgage was simple: “We’re 10 friends who want to buy a property together to build a community of small homes with big communal spaces, and we’re interested in getting a mortgage on this property with the hope to subdivide it in the future.”
While the pitch was simple, the group still had trouble securing a mortgage to buy the property.
Within the group, there were different risk tolerances, amounts of savings, and mortgage eligibility among the 10 of them. As well, there were risks associated with the existing legal framework that would connect the group’s liability or risk profile. But fortunately, O’Toole talked with Vancity, and they provided a solution that met the group’s needs.
“When I talked to Vancity, they basically said, ‘we are not sure we’ve done this before, but we have a couple of models that seem like they’d be pretty easy to adapt. But we probably need your lawyers to make new spaces on the forms, because we simply do not have enough space for 10 people’s signatures.’”
The model that Vancity offered was their Mixer Mortgage™, which offers competitive rates and flexible features that help share the cost of home ownership between two or more people. Plus they provided legal and insurance support, laying out risks like mortgage defaults or exits so that everybody remains protected in the agreement.
“I don’t think that other banks have thought through how to do [this kind of project] in a way that’s safe,” says O’Toole. “They just say we don’t do that instead of unpacking those perceived risks and actually putting a system in place to enable it to occur … What Vancity [said was], ‘We’ll do it. But here are the things we think are important to make sure that it’s safe for you as a group and us as a financial institution.’”
A fresh coat of paint
After securing the property with the help of Vancity, the group got to work on cleaning up the property and fixing up the house that was already there to make it livable for a tenant — which has helped to pay off their mortgage while providing some affordable housing for the area.
O’Toole tells us that they divided everything into smaller groups, assigning a project manager, a backup lead and a budget approval process — which required two-thirds majority approval for minor decisions and full consensus on major ones. This structure helped them stay on-task as they moved through their renovations.
“[This process] was so fun and provided us with an opportunity to spend a ton of time together doing something that helped us to gel as a team,” says O’Toole. “These systems enabled us to slowly increase the level of responsibility through those early stages, which really set us up to be in a good place of trust and mutual respect, and an understanding of what project management was going to look like [as we moved through the rezoning and subdivision process].”
After all the renovations were done and the property was ready to move into the next phase, which O’Toole tells us was roughly an eight-month process, the property was ready to be rezoned.
Getting in the zone
The next phase of the project was submitting an Official Community Plan (OCP) amendment and rezoning application to change the property from a “Rural Residential” zone to a “Comprehensive Development Cluster Housing Area.”
The group needed to go through three different governmental bodies to get all their permits
approved: The Sunshine Coast Regional District; the local health authority, Vancouver Coastal Health; and the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.
While there were some things the group knew had to be accomplished during this stage — like securing water from the city, setting up proper wastewater treatment, placing property boundaries, and getting telecom infrastructure — there were plenty of processes that popped up that even surprised them.
Some of the surprises included having to do two different soil investigations and an archeologist assess the observable presence of archaeological materials or areas of raised archaeological potential, prior to the proposed subdivision and development of the property.
“I don’t think until we actually cracked it open did we realize all of the pieces that would be needed,” says O’Toole. “[We knew] we needed a way to treat wastewater, and we can get water from the regional district — that seemed like the stuff we could overcome. But other things like getting a full tree inventory were pretty interesting. That was literally having an arborist walk around and document every tree on the property, which was kind of fun.”
O’Toole tells us that the goal of the group right now is to complete the subdivision process and start construction of the infrastructure for site servicing, which means building their interior roads and water systems, as well as setting up their biofiltration wastewater treatment system.
They’re close to their final subdivision approval and are waiting on the final comments from a few government bodies — which they’re hoping to hear back from soon. But, once they get those final approvals, the group is good to start on the approvals for their individual house builds while site servicing is underway.
Building together
While this project is still a little ways away from being completed, O’Toole expresses gratitude for being part of this community. At first, the worry was that the group would all lose touch, but this project has provided an exciting opportunity for this community of friends to move through the different stages of their lives together.
“I’m loving witnessing my little niblings growing into little people, and I want to be part of the day-to-day,” says O’Toole. “I want to be part of those mundane things that get lost or get missed when you aren’t witnesses. Whether that’s helping a kiddo get their shoes on or picking them up from the bus, just the day-to-day lives of the people that I consider family, that are friends of mine, that they’re part of this community.”
Through Vancity documenting this series, they’ve shown that there are creative ways to build community, and you don’t have to limit yourself to more conventional approaches. This group of friends has provided a model for this project to work, and O’Toole hopes that this series will inspire people who are interested in building similar community models to take that first step.
“This [community model] is not unique or new,” says O’Toole. “This is almost a return to the ways that we traditionally lived as people, with smaller community groups that rely on each other for all the things that one person can’t do. We each bring unique skill sets to the group to navigate whatever life throws at us.”
To watch “Building Together,” you can head to Vancity’s YouTube page. If you’d like to learn more about the Mixer Mortgage™ that made this project possible, visit Vancity’s website.
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