Vancouver City Council approves exploring expediting social housing up to 12 storeys

Dec 8 2022, 12:34 am

A framework for allowing new denser and taller social housing buildings up to 12 storeys will be drafted by City of Vancouver staff, following a unanimously approved direction by Vancouver City Council today.

City Council approved a member motion by OneCity Councillor Christine Boyle, which was a resubmission of her motion rejected by the previous makeup of City Council in 2021. The motion was green-lighted after hearing from dozens of public speakers, including non-profit housing operators, housing activists, and residents.

Her motion directs City staff to draft policy recommendations for 100% social housing up to 12 storeys and allowable floor area ratio density increases within RM-3A, RM-4, and RM-4N zoning districts, which are largely located within the Kitsilano, Fairview, Mount Pleasant, Grandview-Woodland, and Marpole neighbourhoods.

Additionally, City staff would look at allowing added height and density for other zoning districts for 100% social housing, and consider increasing the level of compensation in the municipal government’s tenant relocation and protection policies for non-market housing.

Boyle pursued these policy changes as a means of improving the viability of building new non-market housing by simplifying and expediting the City’s processes for such development proposals. Instead of the lengthy, costly, and uncertain added step of the rezoning application and public hearing with City Council, such proposals would instead go straight to the development permit application with City staff.

The added building height and density would also improve the financial viability of the projects, and the ability to leverage grant funding from the federal and provincial governments.

While City Council retained the proposed policy framework, the motion was only approved after amendments were made by ABC Councillor Mike Klassen, with Boyle and Green Party Councillors Adriane Carr and Pete Fry in opposition to the changes.

Klassen’s amendments added specific considerations and prescriptions to City staff to explore how such policies could potentially be prioritized within the forthcoming efforts to implement the approved Vancouver Plan through a new city-wide Official Community Plan (OCP), and how the policies could be overlayed with other City policies that exist or are being planned. City staff would also analyze how there could be any unintended impacts.

The three city councillors took issue with the potential delays in implementing the policy changes as a result of Klassen’s amendments approved by the ABC party’s supermajority.

“The language is far less instructive, direct, and instead delayed, contemplated, and considered things, and I am worried. However, it’s going to come back to Council, and staff will bring back considerations and we’ll vote on it,” said Carr.

Fry commented on the need to provide City staff with a defined timeline to carry out their work, and that the amendments “layer on a significant amount of reporting back that wasn’t contemplated in the original motion.”

Boyle said she is “concerned about delays, but alongside I’m very appreciative of Council’s general support for this approach,” and emphasized the need to remove “every barrier that we can so that people can live in cleaner and safer housing, and have stability and continue to call people Vancouver home.”

In response, Klassen said compromise was needed in getting the motion approved.

“Politics is about the art of the possible. This motion has come to Council twice before, and it has not succeeded. We’ve taken it under consideration, and we’ve found a way of getting this over the line,” said Klassen.

“My view is that despite the nuanced language we have in here, the intent is clear. We’re trying to create conditions for housing that’s being asked for in this motion.”

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