City hall touts shorter building permit delays
Some in development industry say issues still exist for larger multi-family projects
City of Vancouver staff say they’ve made significant strides in reducing delays and inefficiencies in the building permit process, a longstanding problem that some said helped drive up housing prices.
In a presentation to council Tuesday, senior city staff said changes in recent years have expedited processes in key areas, including affordable housing and single-family housing.
But people in the development industry say while they ’ve noticed some positive change, they have yet to see significant improvement for larger, multi-family projects, a type of housing that’s expected to provide homes for an increasing portion of Vancouverites.
Tuesday’s presentation was led by two senior city staffers: Kaye Krishna, the city’s general manager of development services, buildings and licensing, and chief planner Gil Kelley. Kelley and Krishna both told Postmedia the permitting backlog had been clearly identified to them as one of city hall’s top issues when they took on their positions, within a few weeks of each other, in 2016.
Kelley said the permitting backlog was a result of a “really steep ramp-up” in the volume and complexity of building applications starting around 2014 and 2015, combined with staff levels that had remained “very flat since 2008.”
“The combination of those two things has really led us to an unworkable gap in expectations and delivery,” Kelley said. “So we’re beginning to bridge that with new processes and new staffing.”
The city has trained more than 230 staff in new development policies and procedures, and hired 42 new staff last year. The 2019 budget, which the new mayor and council approved in December, included money to hire 43 more people this year, which the city says will be “prioritized toward housing, commercial, and green infrastructure developments.”
Krishna recalled Tuesday that when she and Kelley were hired in 2016, improving the permitting backlog “was part of the mandate for the job, for both of us.”
Tuesday’s presentation touted the successes of pilot projects and improvements to municipal building processes made in recent years, launched under the previous mayor and council.
Council heard about the Social Housing or Rental Tenure program, a two-year pilot that launched in 2017 with the aim of delivering 1,700 units of affordable housing through a “streamlined development process.” More than 2,000 housing units are in the pipeline through the program, the city said, and 900 units have already been permitted in half the average development time.
Permit delays and red tape cause hardship for small businesses, and contribute to higher housing costs for homebuyers, said Michael Geller, a Vancouver architect and real estate consultant.
Developers and homebuilders can be hesitant to go on the record with criticisms of city hall, upon whom they rely for approvals, Geller said. But, he said, in conversations with people in the industry, he hears that “considerable frustrations and delays” still exist in Vancouver’s permitting department.
“The city certainly recognizes the problem, and I think it’s to his credit that the mayor did highlight that during the campaign,” Geller said. “But there are many more things they can do.”
Anne McMullin, president of Urban Development Institute, which represents the development industry, said in a statement Tuesday: “Our members agree improvements appear to have been made in the temporary modular housing, single-family and laneway municipal approval processes. But they have yet to see significant improvements on the more complex, multi-family projects that require rezoning.”