Thread by @Lanefab

Comments on #MakingHome proposal for multifamily housing in Vancouver's 'single family' neighbourhoods:

In 2009 Vancouver adopted a laneway house bylaw that was revolutionary at the time. It allowed “single-lot infill development” city wide, in all [RS zoned] neighbourhoods.

In 2018 a limited duplex program was allowed, but it still became a popular alternative to the increasingly unaffordable ‘single family’ home.

In 2022 we have the opportunity to go further by unlocking the real potential of our ‘single family’ neighbourhoods through the ideas described by the Making Home program, and we strongly encourage council to support the intent of the program.

Lanefab has been designing / building eco-friendly lane houses, houses & duplexes for over a decade, and we’ve travelled North America talking to cities about the lessons learned from the LWH policy's success. These same lessons apply equally to the Making Home proposal.

The lane house and duplex policies work because they are relatively simple to get a permit, they were adopted 'citywide', and they can be done on any lot - independent of the style, size or ownership of the existing house.

These programs brought new housing into existing neighbourhoods - many with declining populations - and have allowed existing owners to act as the developer using their own land.

This is profoundly different from our city’s approach to apartment buildings, which usually require lot consolidation (to meet the minimum frontage and parking requirements) and often require rezonings, hearings, and long approval times.

Meanwhile, across the city, there are many large single family homes being built that provide no net housing, affordability, or environmental benefit, yet they’re able to get approvals with relatively little scrutiny.

The lane house and duplex programs, by contrast, have brought in new ground oriented housing to neighbourhoods across the city; some of the only new housing that wasn’t concentrated on noisy and polluted arterials.

In addition, because those policies were incremental and done citywide (in the RS residential zones), they didn’t lead to land value escalation, unlike recent rezoning schemes that have led to substantial upswings in land value in the select pockets of land that were up-zoned.

In the ensuing decade since our team at Lanefab built our first lane house, we’ve been looking for ways to expand the program to provide more of the same benefits to a much broader swath of people.

To those ends we’ve been working on prototypes for densifying single family lots in Vancouver for the last 6 years, and now we’re excited to support the intention behind the Making Home proposal, and strongly hope that this council will make it their own, too.

Our wish list / suggestions for Making Home 👇:

Upzone for Community Benefit:

Allow higher density for projects providing a Community Benefit (in terms of affordability and climate impact). The benefit could be provided either by a % of non market homes, or a predefined cash payment.

Sites with multiple existing rental units (2+) should be ineligible, so as to reduce the dev pressure on existing affordable rentals. There are plenty of owner occupied sf homes that can serve as redevelopment sites instead (if the zoning is changed in a broad-enough area).

Downzone ‘Mansions’:

This means less FSR and a floor area cap for projects providing less than a 2:1 replacement ratio. We should also go further and down-zone 1 unit homes that remove 2 rental units or a heritage house.

This would remove some of the competing development pressure for exclusive homes that are the real driver of escalating land values in Vancouver (and across the country).

Citywide:

This should be a 'citywide' change to existing zoning, similar to what was done for LWH.

It should not be a pocket program limited to one n'hood, or to some arbitrary distance from an arterial road. All of Vancouver can and should allow multi family housing.

Citywide:

If we want to make density conditional (i.e. dependent on a Community Benefit) then we need to cast a wide net to find the lots where this will pencil out. If we only do this in one area, or only close to arterials, the program will fail.

Small Lot / Small Frontage:

Allow full density on single lots, so that development teams don’t have to consolidate multiple lots at current land prices.

An owner who bought their lot in 1970 has a very different calculation to make vs a developer buying at 2022 prices.

“Small Lots” up to a 66’ frontage should get an outright approval process. This includes 33’, 50’ and 60’ lots.

These can be the new background fabric of the city, along with existing single family homes and duplexes.

Subdivision:

Allow all large lots in the city to be subdivided and redeveloped either as single family homes, plexes, or with a shared party wall.

We currently have vast swaths of the city where the minimum lot size is 50 or 60 feet.

Subdivision:

The parts of the city with large lots are also the parts of the city that have lost population in the last decade.

Subdivision would allow a 50’ lot to become two 25’ lots (with a house or triplex on each half) which is vastly simpler than building an 8 plex.

Approvals:

We need a straightforward and predictable permit approval process (it shouldn’t be more onerous than what is needed for a ‘mansion’)

i.e. an outright or combined DP/BP process that doesn’t require a separate development permit or neighbour notification.

Approvals:

We need a level and predictable playing field, as was done with the successful lane house and duplex programs (unlike some neighbouring cities, whose programs have failed due to excessive permitting hoops)

Staff Focus:

Planning staff review time should be directed toward optimizing the Community Benefit in terms of environment and affordability vs micromanaging aesthetics or responding to predictable neighbour concerns.

Staff Focus:

The separate Development Permit process, as embodied by the Character Home program, is excessively slow and expensive and uses up thousands of hours of staff time for negligible benefit beyond propping up character aesthetics in wealthy neighbourhoods.

‘Character Homes’:

The new zoning should integrate / replace the existing Character Home incentive program (which currently provides no environmental or affordability benefit, as verified by internal staff analysis).

We’d like to see the current rules replaced with an FSR exclusion for character home basements, so there’s less incentive to lift and gut older homes.

Density:

Current ‘single family’ zoning allows 0.86 FSR between the house and lane house.
Duplex projects only allow 0.7 FSR.

By contrast many townhouses are around 1.2 FSR and lowrise apartments are 1.4 FSR.

From a climate and affordability point of view we believe that the most beneficial form of housing is in the 3 to 8 storey range, built to the passive house standard, with low embodied energy materials.

There are benefits, however, to having ground oriented homes that can be built under the simpler residential (Part 9) building code

(and we don’t currently have a code that will support euro style ‘point access’ blocks that are super efficient, accessible and affordable)

Given this, we believe that an upzone in the range of 1.2 to 1.4 FSR is the easiest to achieve on existing single family lots. Ideally these are 3 storeys, at grade, with improved accessibility vs single family homes and townhouses.

At the same time we believe that the ‘default’ housing supported by planning policy should be a ‘plex vs a single family home.

We’d like to see a triplex or fourplex option available at ~0.9 FSR without any additional complexity in the form of Community Benefit payments etc.

A ‘plex’ is already a much more beneficial form of housing, with better affordability and lower climate impact vs a single family house, and should be supported as such.

Ok... end of rant for now