Adrian Crook: Put an end to single-family zoning to end housing crisis
Credit to Author: Gordon Clark| Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2019 01:00:54 +0000
In January 2018, I had a chance to meet with Housing Minister Selina Robinson. At the time, I mentioned that the province could bring in land-use reform to effectively end single-family zoning.
Single-family zoning is why it’s illegal to build multi-family buildings, like apartments or social housing, on over 70 per cent of the land in Vancouver. The same de facto ban on apartment-type buildings exists in most of B.C.’s urban centres.
Single-family zoning is the legislated status quo that mandates housing scarcity, driving up land prices, forcing displacement of vulnerable residents and walling off transit- and amenity-rich land for use only by the extremely wealthy.
Even as we embark upon once-in-a-generation city planning processes, like what is underway in Vancouver currently, the template derived from exclusionary zoning ensures that incrementalism prevails — already densified areas get even bigger buildings, while neighbourhoods previously zoned only for detached houses get … duplexes.
Under the guise of “neighbourhood character,” incrementalism lets some areas off the hook precisely because of their history of exclusion, which is why it’s important we look at truly transformative actions.
Vancouver has approved just 25 per cent of its annual target of new housing, fighting bitterly over relatively tiny incremental improvements like 21 rental townhomes in a tony West Side neighbourhood. That project alone drew dozens of speakers and consumed 10 hours across three days of city council time. An astute observer noted that at that rate, “council would have to sit for 4,200 hours just to hit the purpose-built rental target. Or 5.75 months of public hearings, with no sleep or meal breaks. That is not a sustainable or scalable system.”
(The townhomes were rejected by council and there will now be a newly built 13,000-square-foot mansion instead.)
District of North Vancouver council rejected apartment and B.C. Housing-supported social housing developments, citing the usual neighbourhood character, shade, traffic and other typical talking points of their well-housed, home-owning constituents.
Port Moody’s acting mayor recently proposed a motion to rip up the barely two-year-old portion of that city’s Official Community Plan. If successful, the proposal would replace an area zoned for high-density housing with primarily commercial office zoning, submarining transit-oriented housing development plans that have been in the works by a consortium of land owners and city staff for almost two years. All this in an area served by two brand-new SkyTrain stations and a West Coast Express station.
And in West Vancouver, the bitterness over a 17-storey infill rental housing development has led the anti-development residents to lob death threats at that city’s mayor.
Land-use reform has widespread popular support. So why are we seeing such a regressive stance taken by some councils, coupled with declarations of war by residents “affected” by each individual rezoning or other land-use decision?
As Robinson knows, our cities are “creatures of the province” itself, their own powers imbued by instruments such as the Vancouver Charter. In fact, the NDP government has already twice stepped across that provincial/municipal line for housing — first with the school tax, and arguably again with temporary modular housing in Maple Ridge.
Now it’s incumbent upon Robinson to lead the legislature to come together for one larger purpose. The time for spectating as city councils acquiesce in the face of the status quo is over.
Let’s enact British Columbia’s provincial minimum zoning before our battle for housing equity is lost entirely.
Adrian Crook is a housing advocate, co-founder of the independent non-profit group Abundant Housing Vancouver, and spokesperson for B.C. Rental Project.