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🏁 In housing, speed matters

Earlier this fall, we wrote about the reasons why housing is so expensive, highlighting the long approvals process as one factor.

Although our housing crisis has led to a handshake agreement between the public and private sectors on the importance of new homes, it remains tricky to achieve the density we need. Before a housing project can even get shovels in the ground, there are several boxes to tick.

• Land — finding a location for new homes

• Feasibility — making sure the project is financially viable

• Approvals — getting permission to build

• Financing — securing funding for the project

These take an average of 3 to 5 years, depending on the size of the project.

For a new rental housing building, the approvals step may require a rezoning of land and a development permit. To secure these, the builder must navigate layers of municipal checks and balances. This timeline can be challenging to predict, which makes it hard to estimate the final cost of the project. While waiting for permission, the builder still has to pay fees on the land and consultants like architects or urban planners.

If a project gets delayed or pushed back during the approvals process, it can add months and thousands or millions of dollars to the final cost. Because builders need to recoup the cost of the project, these expenses will be passed on to the renters..

This means that the faster housing gets approved and built, the cheaper it will be. We’ve heard countless stories of builders that planned to provide affordable units in a project, but ultimately couldn’t because of cost increases that came from delays. Even if a project eventually does get approved, delays may mean it’s no longer viable to build. 2024 housing starts in Coquitlam are a great illustration of this.

In the current state of Canada’s housing crisis, we need to understand that creating new housing is both fundamentally necessary and positive. If we don’t build, affordability will only get worse.

Building housing comes with a huge risk. There’s never a guarantee that project proposals will be approved. A developer could buy land and spend money planning something that never materializes.

With that being said, checks and balances are still super important. They act as the foundation that ensures new housing meets the needs of its users and their communities. We have to explore ways to move housing projects forward quickly without sacrificing on quality. Standardization is one way to do that.

Right now, municipalities use planning documents like an Official Community Plan (OCP in BC) or Official Plan (OP in Toronto) to guide new housing and growth strategy. These exhaustive documents use zoning to outline opportunities for densification and set standards on height, design, etc.

Here’s the problem: OCPs and OPs are often super outdated and take years to update. Before Toronto refreshed its OP in 2024, it was last overhauled in 2002 — before most of us were born.

Consider how much our definition of a city has changed in the last decade, never mind in 22 years. It’s a night and day difference. With such outdated guidelines, most new projects require amendments, which take up valuable time and make the actual housing more expensive.

One way to tackle this is to require municipalities to overhaul planning documents frequently. In late 2023, BC’s provincial government set expectations for municipalities — update your OCP every 5 years and include standardized policies that allow for three or more units on single-family home lots. One big change was removing the requirement for public hearings on housing that meets OCP standards. This can fast track housing that meets community needs, as long as guidelines are refreshed often.

BC is following this up with standardized multiplex designs to make it easier for homeowners to transition their single-family home to multiple units. While this is a positive, it shouldn’t take away focus from streamlining larger projects. Scale can add infinite layers of complexity to development.

All levels of government should be exploring ways to build new housing both cheaper and faster. Hitting 2030 supply targets will require collaboration from the public and private sectors — neither can do it alone.

👏 Good news in housing

Vancouver wants to fast track social housing projects

The proposed policy would eliminate the need for individual rezoning for projects owned by non-profits or governments. Depending on location, it would apply for up to 6 storeys in villages and up to 18 storeys in neighbourhood centres. This would drastically reduce pre-construction timelines for projects that meet the criteria, which would make it faster and cheaper to build social housing. Keep reading…

168 affordable student housing apartments for Montreal

UTILE, a Quebec-based student housing builder is partnering with the Federal Government and the City of Montreal to provide these units to primarily McGill students. The building is expected to open in fall 2026 and when it’s completed, will welcome a total of 280 tenants. Keep reading…

Slight impact could come from immigration pullback

Experts suggest that updated federal immigration targets may have an impact on housing affordability by 2025. Not all agree on the scale of this — some researchers think housing demand will dip as soon as the policy takes effect, while others warn that immigration isn’t as a “magic” way to solve all housing-related issues. Experts agree that immigration should not be seen as the sole cause of the housing crisis. Keep reading…

🗂 Resources for new renters

Whether it’s your first time living on your own or you’ve been renting for years, this is the time of year that lots of young people are getting settled in new places, which can involve dealing with a new landlord.

Is your landlord illegally entering your unit, trying to change your agreement without your consent, or unreasonably preventing you from having overnight guests?

If so, and you can’t quite figure out how to word a message to your landlord, check out the list of template letters from BC’s Tenant Resource and Advisory Centre to help you out.

There’s even a template roommate agreement.

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