A plan aimed at reducing the cost and time related to the development of new housing needs more discussion and due diligence before it’s something city council can support.
On Monday, council considered a motion by councillors Daniel Fontaine and Paul Minhas to have staff report back to council by April 30 with a plan for the City of New Westminster to develop up to 15 standardized and pre-approved housing designs, which would be implemented by Dec. 31. The motion stated that pre-approved housing designs have worked well for laneway housing in developments in other cities and would help to create more affordable housing in New West.
“My belief is, if cities can pre-approve laneway housing designs to save time and money for the developer, for the city and for the end user, then we should be doing that,” Fontaine said. “So then the same could be applied – if we can do that for laneway housing, we can also do it for single-family homes, for townhomes and for other forms of high-density development.”
Fontaine said the motion is part of a commitment made by the New West Progressives related to increasing the supply of housing, reducing costs and red tape, and streamlining the approval and development process.
“We have this motion to rethink the way we build our city,” he said. “I'm proposing that we authorize staff to come back to us with up to 15, perhaps more if possible, pre-approved designs that would be pre-approved and would be there for certain lot sizes and locations.”
Fontaine said the motion isn’t about just about creating more single-family homes.
“In theory, we should be able to do better than that. We should have pre-approved townhome, laneway and even larger, more dense developments like four- and six-storey apartment and condo units,” he said. “Through this process, I'd like to also create what I refer to as a housing design bank. The housing design bank would eventually be filled with pre-approved housing designs that have been given the green light and approved by staff, by council and by our various advisory bodies.”
Fontaine said the city could encourage and provide incentives to developers, architects and home builders to have their unique home designs included in the home design bank so others could use them.
“Over time, approved design after approved design after approved design would be added to the home design bank. And eventually someone wanting to build a home in New West would have a plethora of pre-approved designs to choose from,” he said. “And to be clear … these will not be cookie-cutter homes; they are not going to turn into the next Vancouver special. Quite the contrary, they will need internal design approvals before they're given the green light by our own advisory panels and planning stuff.”
Coun. Tasha Henderson said she’s not opposed to the idea of exploring this idea, but wants to ensure due diligence is followed in the process.
“I'm not sure who was asking the city for this. Was it the building community? Developers?” she said. “We know that we are exceeding our target for detached market housing, so I would just need to know that we are meeting a need for our other housing targets across the housing spectrum.”
Henderson, who is a housing planner by profession, said New West can be a “very challenging” city in which to build.
“It’s not easy to compare it to other jurisdictions,” she said. “We have, I think, no standardized lot sizes across the city. Building in Queensborough is completely different than building in the mainland; it has its own unique set of issues. The topography, with our hills, makes building here very complicated. I think we don't even know what the soil and what's underground in terms of most of our infrastructure because we have such an old city. And then we have this heritage piece with our neighbourhood around requiring houses to fit the look and feel of the neighbourhood.”
Henderson also expressed concern about the “arbitrary deadline” of December 2023 that’s included in the motion.
“This is a huge project. This is at least a full time staff person with additional consulting fees,” she said. “And I would need to know what the tradeoff here is of what needs to be dropped in order to bring this on board.”
Henderson said the city needs to do what it can to streamline and accelerate permitting processes. She said there are other ways to support housing, other than getting into the business of designing homes.
“I just think we owe it to the public to say that we've done our due diligence, and this is missing that fundamental step. We have to be able to say, ‘Yes, it's feasible in New Westminster given our particular challenges around land development. Yes, there's a widespread market for accessible and efficient houses. And yes, this is absolutely worth dedicating limited staff resources, because it meets a pronounced need in our housing targets.’ But to tell staff to just go and start it without that analysis feels a little bit cart-before-the-horse for me, so I'm not comfortable supporting this motion as-is. I'm not saying there's not value in exploring it. But I think we're sort of one step ahead of ourselves.”
Coun. Jaimie McEvoy suggested council refer the motion to the city’s housing task force for consideration.
McEvoy said council still needs to consider what housing initiatives it wants to focus on during its four-year term. He said the current focus is on affordability as it relates to low-income people, social housing and secure market rental as a potential way of filling some gaps in “missing middle” housing – housing forms that fall between single-family homes and highrises, such as townhouses, rowhouses and quadraplexes.
“If it goes to the housing task force, it can continue to be discussed, but in the context of the other housing work as well,” he said. “And I would assume that, coming back to council for council to do a workshop and housing policy and be able to have some informal discussion, and throw around ideas, I think would be a good way to follow up on this.”
Fontaine expressed concern about referring the motion to the task force without knowing when the proposal may return to council.
McEvoy said he couldn’t say when it would come back to council.
“The issue with adopting a motion on any topic with a specific task and a specific deadline is it can have the effect that other work gets sidelined in order to accomplish that,” McEvoy said. “So, currently, there's work being done in the city on how to use city and other properties for affordable housing.”
Mayor Patrick Johnstone said the intent is to refer the motion to the task force to determine whether it fits into the city’s priorities for housing.
In a 4-2 vote, council supported a motion to refer the item to the housing task force (Minhas and Fontaine voted in opposition.)
“I think it's incumbent upon our council to send a very clear direction to staff, as a council, that we're interested in these types of things,” Fontaine said. “And if there are challenges or there are concerns, it's our professional staff who will come back to us and point out that there are challenges and that there are concerns, and I'm fully confident that staff will do that.”
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