City rethinks single-family zoning
Six-plexes won’t be sprouting up just yet on every single-family lot in the Okanagan but it won’t be long before the possibility will be there.
A new housing policy in Victoria now allows up to six units to be built on lots that used to be reserved for single-family homes and local governments in the Okanagan are actively considering the concept.
Some call it an end to single-family housing zoning. While that may be overstating the case, it is an approach that has attracted a lot of attention as cities look for innovative ideas to increase the housing supply.
Victoria’s is one of the broader policies out there, said Kelowna infill and housing policy manager James Moore, but many cities, including Kelowna and West Kelowna, are working on similar ideas.
Both cities are developing plans expected to be rolled out by the end of summer.
Not without controversy, Victoria’s “missing middle” policy amends bylaws, land-use procedures and the official community plans to permit infill, “houseplexes” and corner townhouses where zoning currently allows only single-family homes.
It also allows city planning staff to approve non-controversial projects without having to go through council, something other cities are allowing as well.
“Houseplexes” as the name suggests, are multi-unit buildings designed to look like a house. Corner-lot townhouses will be allowed up to 12 units.
Other cities have different names for policies designed to allow more innovative types of housing in their populated areas, but missing middle is a favourite.
(Architect Daniel Parolek of Opticos Design in Berkeley, Calif., is credited with coining the term “missing middle housing,” which involves providing more housing choices in sustainable, walkable places, according to the Opticos website.)
Kelowna launched its Infill Options program last summer, and is now exploring ideas for new types of housing. Vernon has a Housing Action Plan which refers repeatedly to “attainable housing.” Vancouver has its Housing Vancouver strategy, and so on.
“Victoria has picked a path. Each community has a slightly different way of approaching it,” said Moore.
Ontario is allowing up to four units on every single-family lot, provincewide, Moore said.
Kelowna’s Infill Options Program will be completed over the next four to six months. “We’re looking at ways to expand options in core areas,” said Moore.
The measures will add to steps the city has already taken over the last seven years. Moore points to 2016 when the city prezoned 800 lots for infill, family-friendly housing. A zoning bylaw in 2016 allowed as many as four individually titled units on RU7-zoned properties. It’s not clear if the new housing options, should they actually be adopted, would be rental only or available for sale as strata units.
In one respect Kelowna is an early adopter of infill housing with the introduction in the late 1990s of the carriage house concept. Carriage houses have since become common in that city with well over 700 of them dotting single-family neighbourhoods.
Those earlier efforts have shown there was a lot of demand for housing, but also barriers to their construction – financial for some smaller builders – as well as zoning barriers, Moore said.
Seventy-five to 80 per cent of the land base in larger cities is typically reserved for single-family housing, Moore said. “That makes it awfully difficult to provide the scale of housing needed to live there.”
West Kelowna is also working on new approaches to housing through a new official community plan.
An open house last Wednesday, in the middle of a snowstorm, still attracted a highly engaged crowd, said Brent Magnan, that city’s planning manager.
The city conducted a housing needs assessment last summer and is now working, as part of the Official Community Plan, to put together short-, medium- and long-term solutions, said Magnan.
One particular need identified was more seniors housing. “We know we’re short on rental accommodations,” he said.
Magnan used the word “gentle” to describe how the city will approach, which would seem to mean these new housing options won’t be forced on an unwilling community.
Asked to expand on that, he said conversations must be held with the community about housing. “Diversity is a key,” he added.
Like its much larger neighbour, West Kelowna has acted in the past to add more and varied types of housing, approving carriage homes, secondary suites and apartment buildings of up to six storeys.
“The new OCP will be going quite a bit further,” suggested Magnan.
West Kelowna is projecting 14,000 more residents over the next 20 years. The OCP will plan for 18,000, he said.
It anticipates a series of neighbourhood and urban centres with buildings up to six storeys, and 12 storeys in downtown Westbank.
In Penticton, Blake Laven, the city’s director of development services, expects housing will be one of the top priorities of the current council.
“Penticton always has the challenge of being constrained [by geography],” Laven said, but he added there are still opportunities for growth.