A residential neighborhood in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Oct. 10, 2022. The city had refused to pass a compliant plan when it voted on zoning changes in May and had argued city council should decide how many properties to upgrade.CHRIS HELGREN/Reuters
City council in British Columbia’s wealthy West Vancouver is scrambling to comply with a provincial ultimatum requiring the city to allow more multiunit housing on formerly single-detached-only properties by later next month or have the province change its zoning on its behalf.
The city refused to pass a compliant plan when it voted on zoning changes in May and has been arguing city council should decide how many properties to upgrade, defying the province’s June 30 deadline to integrate a requirement for significant density near major transit hubs. The province also requires municipalities to allow multiplex housing – everything from duplexes to fourplexes to row houses – on any lot currently restricted to single detached housing only.
But on Monday, West Vancouver council reluctantly voted to adopt a compliant plan, which council said would be finalized in September.
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Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon said Tuesday that wasn’t good enough and said he would be getting an order-in-council to make the change if West Vancouver didn’t approve it by Aug. 24. He said most other municipalities met the June 30 deadline and West Vancouver had “put themselves into a jam” by refusing back in May to endorse a new plan.
“Their staff recommended council approve the changes months ago and they chose not to,” he said, noting that the province gave municipalities $51-million to help them pay for the extra costs to redo their community zoning systems as required. “It’s not fair to all the other communities that met the deadline.”
Mayor Mark Sager is furious. In an interview, he said Mr. Kahlon’s demands are not about making the housing situation better for anyone but “just looking for headlines.” Council will meet Wednesday to ensure the change is in place within two weeks.
Mr. Sager said West Vancouver has been trying to get provincial help in creating new housing at two former seniors housing sites but says it hasn’t gotten anywhere.
“Instead, he’s putting the gun to our head with legislation that isn’t going to achieve anything.”
According to the ministry, 162 of the province’s 188 municipalities have already approved the new plans.
Other mayors and councillors have expressed dismay at the sweeping changes being forced on their communities, arguing that allowing massive new amounts of housing all over is going to put a strain on already stressed infrastructure and plop density in some inappropriate places that look good on a map but don’t work in reality.
The very public spat between the province and West Vancouver is over an extremely small number of properties, almost all of them in the parts of the Ambleside and Dundarave neighbourhoods close to Marine Drive and the city’s major bus route. Most of West Vancouver, which extends out to Horseshoe Bay in the west and up Cypress Mountain in the north, is unaffected by the ministry’s requirements.
That’s because West Vancouver had voted several years ago to allow most lots to have a secondary suite and a coach house.
Planners at Monday’s meeting said the new zoning would mean that 381 parcels in total would be covered by the requirement to allow multiunit housing onto lots previously zoned for single-detached, only 166 more than what council had approved in May. The affected properties account for 2.8 per cent of all lots in West Vancouver.
West Vancouver, with a population of about 45,000, is routinely listed in real-estate profiles and media reports as one of the wealthiest communities in Canada, with high household net worth and high employment income overall. It has also been identified as one of the slowest-growing areas of Metro Vancouver of the past quarter century. About 80 per cent of West Vancouver employees commute from outside the city.
Councillor Christine Cassidy and other councillors said West Vancouver has been working hard to add housing, rezoning the city several years ago to allow the basement suites and coach houses on most lots as well as approving big new projects and areas for development.
“I’m not somebody who likes to be dictated to,” said Ms. Cassidy, calling the current government “now quite frankly bordering on communism.”
One dissenting voice was Nora Gambioli’s. She said, in her 12 years on council, West Vancouver really had not done its part.
“For the entire 12 years, we have not done enough. There has not been enough work force housing. It’s really sporadic.”
Special to The Globe and Mail