"We have a problem": Vancouver facing backlog of building applications

"We have a problem": City of Vancouver facing lengthy backlog of building applications

Construction cranes in Vancouver. (Shutterstock)

Staff with the City of Vancouver have sounded the alarm bells that they are struggling to keep up with a recent surge in rezoning-related application tasks, compounded by the lack of public hearings with Vancouver City Council over the latter four months of 2022 due to the civic election.

Chief planner Theresa O’Donnell provided City Council with an update last week, stating that there are 296 active rezoning applications as of the end of January 2023 — about 100 more than typical.

About two-thirds of these rezoning applications are in the pre-application stage, while only the remaining one-third have progressed to a formal rezoning application submission.

The vast majority of these rezoning-related applications, 217, deal with major projects with condominiums, affordable housing, offices, and industrial space, which all take longer to review and process given that they are more complicated.

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O’Donnell also notes that following last summer’s approval of the Broadway Plan, there was an “extraordinary” volume of “Letters of Inquiry” — an action taken by project proponents looking to submit a rezoning application, but want to gauge feedback from City staff first on how to best shape a proposal that meets City requirements and objectives.

The total number of rezoning enquiries in the pre-application stage reached 120 in 2022 — up from 42 in 2021, 38 in 2020, 86 in 2019, and 101 in 2018.

For the actual number of formal rezoning applications submitted, it reached 86 applications in 2022 — up from 65 in 2021, 70 in 2020, and 59 in 2018, but just slightly lower than 90 in 2019.

“We’re watching these trends very closely to identify the drivers and indicators to understand if this is a prolonged increase or a sudden spike that we need to move through,” said O’Donnell.

In July 2021, City Council overhauled the way in which City staff process rezoning pre-enquiries, effectively opening the door for a wider range and volume of rezoning applications by having City Council, not City staff, be the final arbiter for whether an application should be processed for consideration. This process was created after it was revealed that at least 70 projects in the enquiry process with a combined total of thousands of homes had been put in limbo, with little or no action taken by City staff to advance these projects.

O’Donnell says many proponents are now making more requests to City staff during their pre-application stage to revise their proposals amidst the very difficult economic climate for making projects feasible.

“We know the economic uncertainty in the development industry right now is creating a lot of uncertainty,” she said, noting that two-thirds of the rezoning team’s work is now just offering pre-application advice.

“People want to come in and reposition their assets, change applications they’ve already had in their system. That is creating a lot of work.”

She adds that “our service levels will be slipping,” and asserts that optimized efficiency measures alone are “not going to be enough to handle the spike.” Her team is looking to expand their staffing capacity at least temporarily to work on the backlog.

“We know our response times are slower, we’re getting longer processing times, a lot of frustration… because our applicants have been very used to a very high responsive level from the rezoning division,” she added.

When it comes to pushing rezoning applications down the review process assembly line to reach the public hearing with City Council, O’Donnell says they will consider adding more public hearing dates, improving the efficiency of how public hearing meetings are conducted, and possibly prioritizing applications by type.

The number of rezoning applications that reached public hearings was 43 in 2018, 76 in 2019, 62 in 2020, and 72 in 2021, and 63 in 2022. The figure for 2022 was highly compressed between January and July, before the City’s annual month-long August break and the hiatus during the civic election cycle.

The median months from application to public hearing has grown from 11.7 months for major proposals and 4.8 months for minor proposals in 2019 to 12.2 months for major proposals and 7.2 months for minor proposals in 2022.

“Today was just kind of a warning signal to tell you that we have a problem. Houston, there is a problem. We are working to address it, and will be reporting back in the near future on prioritizing different types of applications,” continued O’Donnell.

As for licensing and building permit applications, there continue to be staffing pressures for the teams that review such applications, which hinder the ability to meet the objectives of consistently improving timelines and processes.

The municipal government has been working on simplifying its regulations, such as the most recent proposal of simplifying low-density residential uses by consolidating RS” zoning district schedules.

“The City relies on permits and licences to implement a range of important policy objectives. However, the complexity of the policy framework that has been developed over time has greatly increased the effort and time required to administer it. This is the fundamental challenge that is being addressed through this program,” said Andrea Law, the City’s general manager of development buildings and licensing.

Law notes 90% of business licence applications are simple, while 10% are more complex. For the review process, each application could go through as many as 45 review groups within the City’s various departments, divisions, and teams.

She says the priority now is to increase staffing and optimize the use of technology to help bring timelines back down. At the same time, there is also demand for in-person assistance given that some applicants have found the City’s new online processes to be challenging to navigate.

While there is still much room for improvement, Law highlighted the following positive changes that have been made over the past 18 months:

Reduced time to check plans for low-density housing projects, down by 80% (from 12 weeks to 18 days).
Business licences wait times are down by 88% (from 16 weeks to two weeks).
New direct-to-inspections permit program for simple renovations, reducing processing time by 88% (from eight weeks to one week).
Electronic Plan Review across all permitting types, saving all applicants a combined estimated total of about $1 million per year in printing costs.
Limited out-of-scope reviews. Have limited reviews of previous unpermitted work that is outside the scope of current permit applications.
More transparency. Current turnaround times for many permit types now posted on website.
Standalone laneways stream reduced plan checking time by 90% (28 weeks to two weeks).
Renovation of code-compliant buildings can receive a permit in two weeks compared to four or more weeks, representing a 50% reduction.
Change of use relaxations for both permitting and licensing streams. Exempting certain types of businesses — such as office and retail. This saves up to 12 weeks for getting a business licence.
Moved to an appointment system allowing applicants to meet directly with City staff to expedite resolutions.

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