91原创 Township will have three months to bring its bylaws into compliance with the new provincial rules that allow higher-density housing on single-family lots.
Last year, BC Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon announced a series of ambitious reforms to residential land-use and housing policy in B.C., including the end of single-family zoning across large areas of the province.
The plan included higher densities around transit hubs, and allows for more townhouses, fourplexes, and near frequent-transit corridors, sixplexes. The new density rules apply to all previously single-family housing lots that are serviced with sewer and water, and not in the ALR. The new housing type was referred to as small-scale multi-unit housing (SSMUH). Small rural municipalities were also exempt.
The goal was to increase density and free up more space for housing on land that has been locked into single-family zoning, often for decades.
Municipalities around B.C. had until the start of July to bring their bylaws into compliance with the new rules.
91原创 Township Mayor Eric Woodward was highly critical of the reforms, and the impact they would have on existing Township development policies and plans for future growth and density.
The Township applied for an extension on adopting the SSMUH regulations, but in late July the BC Housing Ministry said that the extension had been denied.
"The request for extension on the basis of council鈥檚 deferral is refused," said the letter from Kahlon to the Township, dated July 25. "Based on the application materials submitted, it is not apparent enough (from the documentation provided) that infrastructure upgrades are immediately needed in order to address risk to public health, safety, or environment."
The Township now has until Oct. 23 to wrap up its bylaws.
The council has pushed the bylaws needed through most of the steps of the process, but they held off on the final reading that would have made them official policy.
"I am confident this will give staff enough time to provide Council with some additional information regarding the infrastructure gaps, gaps that seem to be of no concern to the minister [Kahlon]," Woodward said.
"We have a responsibility to consider these issues before proceeding," Woodward said. "Council and the public need to be fully aware of the significant, long-term cost implications potentially facing our utility users and property taxpayers, of could be tens of millions of dollars. All for what may amount to relatively few new housing units vs what is ongoing within Willoughby, let alone Willowbrook and Brookswood-Fernridge in the future."
Woodward has described the housing reforms as housing policy made "with a chainsaw."
The concern is that the Township, which is one of the fastest-growing municipalities in B.C., might simultaneously see rapid development where it has been planned for, in Willoughby and Brookswood-Fernridge, as well as infill development in older neighbourhoods.
Potential impacts on parks, schools, sewer and water pipes, and roads led the Township to tear up neighbourhood plans for Brookswood-Fernridge last year and to revamp the entire document. A significant amount of land had been set aside for single-family housing, and there were fears developers could simply build fourplexes on each of those lots, dramatically increasing local population beyond what planned infrastructure could handle.
