Vancouver City Council approves temporary policy for building application review

Vancouver City Council approves temporary framework for reviewing building applications due to backlog

Construction of the MC2 residential towers near SkyTrain Marine Drive Station in South Vancouver. The complex reached completion in 2016. (romakoma/Shutterstock)

The Policy Enquiry Process (PEP) implemented by the previous makeup of Vancouver City Council for reviewing building development proposals that do not comply with municipal policies has been scrapped.

Vancouver City Council unanimously voted today to approve an amendment by ABC councillor Mike Klassen to abolish the PEP, which has been a stream in place since 2021 to provide non-compliant proposals with an alternative potential path forward. PEP was implemented in 2021 after the previous City Council discovered about 70 potential proposals, consisting of thousands of homes, that were in a state of limbo with City staff.

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Without the PEP, Klassen says, proponents will fall back on the Letter of Enquiry (LOE) process of the formal rezoning application process.

ABC councillor Rebecca Bligh further elaborated it was a drain of City staff resources, as it attracted inquiries on highly conceptual and preliminary development ideas, including applications before land acquisitions were made. With the PEP abolished, she says, it will allow City staff to focus on “legitimate, committed projects.”

“To be quite candid, it didn’t turn out the way that I had originally thought it would,” Vancouver chief planner Theresa O’Donnell told City Council.

O’Donnell also suggested the PEP application fee was “not priced accurately,” suggesting it was not cost-neutral to the municipal government in terms of the labour resources used to review the ideas, and the relatively low fee allowed consultants to repeatedly use the City for their consultancy work.

“I thought it would give us an opportunity to do a vetting of good ideas, but what it turned out to be was for a great way for the consultants to throw ideas out, even if the projects were real or not. We did see a handful of really great projects, but those could have come through the enhanced rezoning process,” continued the chief planner.

Some proposals that are very near completing the PEP process will be allowed to continue through this stream.

But City Council was divided over the matter of City staff’s proposal of creating a short-term framework for identifying which rezoning applications should be prioritized for review, given the current backlog of applications awaiting processing and review.

O’Donnell told City Council the measures would be temporary until City planners are able to catch up to their workload, which she expects to be reached by Fall 2023.

City staff initially proposed a framework of temporarily prioritizing affordable housing projects (rental projects with at least 20% below-market rental housing; social housing; supportive housing; and co-operative housing), along with job space projects (office, hotels retail, and industrial).

However, the ABC Vancouver party majority in City Council disagreed on the main prioritization of below-market rental housing, social housing, and supportive housing, with ABC councillor Peter Mesizner putting forward an amendment to focus on the entire “housing continuum” of all housing tenure types, including market housing — not just highly affordable housing. The approved amendment directs City staff to temporarily prioritize applications based on net new housing units, regardless of tenure type.

“When I was first elected to council, everything was condos. The very first move made by Vision in 2011 was to bringing in a program to entice developers to do rental housing. You’re going backwards by passing these amendments,” said Green Party councillor Adriane Carr during the debate.

“If developers are given a chance, if they see it’s equal access with their projects in the pipeline, they’re going to do what gives them back the most money, and that’s condos.”

Green Party councillor Pete Fry also suggested proponents of strata projects should not be put on an equal footing as affordable housing projects.

In response, Bligh suggested the previous makeup of City Council “got nowhere” by prioritizing market rental housing projects that included 20% below-market units, asserting that the selective approach was not meeting heightened immigration levels to Metro Vancouver.

Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung also brought up the scenario “if people cannot find rental apartments because we’re only focusing on small subsets of social [housing]. It doesn’t mean we’re not doing that, it means we’re doing that ‘and.’ People need choices. If people can’t get those rental units, then they’re scrapping for those more affordable units and older stock that other people desperately need.”

O’Donnell noted that as applications are considered on a case-to-case basis, it does not necessarily mean projects with affordable housing will be deprioritized.

According to City staff, since October 2021 when the PEP was first launched, a total of 46 proposals going through the pre-zoning stream have been received by the City. Only 11 proposals have proceeded into the next application stages for further review, with these proposals representing a combined total of about 4,000 homes and 124,000 sq ft of job space. City staff note 65% of the overall Policy Enquiry submissions fell short of the minimum criteria.

As of earlier this month, City staff are processing 100 rezoning applications and 120 rezoning enquiries, which collectively represent the potential for 8.8 million sq ft of job space (retail, service, industrial, and office) and about 36,000 homes, including 23,000 market rental homes, 4,100 below-market rental homes, 3,700 social housing units, and 4,800 condominiums.

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