Editor:
I'm writing in regarding a motion brought forward to New Westminster city council on Monday, Dec 12 (item 7.2a "Reducing the cost and time related to the development of new housing in New Westminster").
As someone who has worked on projects in New Westminster as well as a variety of municipalities, I understand firsthand the complexities of our housing crisis and the challenges of housing development approvals. However, this motion will in fact provide the opposite effect.
I understand the intent of the notion. Expediting housing and adding much-needed new homes to our current housing shortage is of great importance. However, this motion illustrates a lack of understanding about the industry and the core issues that perpetuate our housing crisis. We are facing an increasing amount of regulations, development costs, and therefore risks. While regulations should certainly exist to ensure sufficient and appropriate housing, the government should not be tasked with the job of designing buildings. This is the role of developers, builders, architects, and engineers — who have spent decades and their careers doing this and managing the risks of building.
Each site and building is completely unique and comes with their requirements, challenges, and risks. For example, each site has different servicing requirements depending on the location in the city it is built in — whether it has a sidewalk, needs upgrades, has an existing or needs a new services connection or not — the list goes on. These requirements dictate the foundations and servicing entries into the building. The location of a patio is often impacted by whether there are overhead electrical lines, and the amount of setback required is also often impacted by the location and size of neighbouring buildings. Unit sizes are impacted by type of tenure and the type of market need based on location. Each building's massing and facade requirements are often heavily influenced by the character of the neighbourhood, which varies throughout New Westminster. These are only a small sample of the factors that come into play when considering building design. The idea of a "preapproved housing design" is minimizing the amount of complexity that is required when developing and building housing.
The city is already backlogged and spends too much time on building approvals, especially for much-needed, larger, mixed-use projects. Staff are already stretched and doing their best to keep up with permit approvals. With limited time and resources, the money and time spent on such a motion is an utter waste of resources and will ultimately produce a set of plans that will not be usable because they don't function in the reality of housing development. Furthermore, given the extreme shortage of housing options in our current market, the city's efforts should be focused on multi-family housing and getting much more mixed-use and multi-family units approved quickly.
I hope that council can hear from industry experts and better focus their good intent into actions that will actually reduce the cost and time of development in New Westminster, rather than delay in with this motion.
Thank you,
Helen Lui
Editor's note: This item is on the agenda for the Monday, Jan. 9 council meeting.
