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Premier David Eby is shrugging off a blast of criticism on his housing policies from Metro Vancouver municipalities, telling a coalition of 15 mayors he’s not altering course or backing off on what they view as running roughshod over local community planning.
The mayors sent Eby a letter asking him to repeal legislation that set housing targets, mandatory density around transit hubs and mandatory zoning for quadplexes on single-family lots, saying the laws have caused chaos and backlash at a municipal level.
“In terms of backing off on the idea that someone should be able to build a townhome or a duplex or triplex, like I don't know why we would say to a family, ‘No, sorry you're not allowed to live in this established neighbourhood, we're not going to provide you options here, the only way to do it is through a multi-year rezoning process,’” Eby said.
“It would be nice if, voluntarily, cities would take this on. But the case is simple, that aside from some outstanding cities that really led the way here, the vast majority of municipalities in the province were unable or unwilling to make these necessary changes, and we had to take that step.”
Municipalities: please trust us to fix a problem we have no intention to fix without force and have spent literal decades crafting into creation. We swear we won't just go back to nimby protectionism that only benefits the wealthy.
Honestly if these municipalities had every intention to approve more housing rapidly they wouldn't be complaining about goals.
Have you noticed they are mentioning nothing of the massive homes? They are okay with a home owner building a 5000 square foot place with 8 bedrooms, which itself causes the price of property to shoot up, but allow something with 6 bedrooms with separate entrances - nope, absolutely not. They reject this for some reason.
Takes less time for a home to go from tear down into a McMansion, than getting approval to split the lot so you can build two smaller SFHs. Happened to most of my block. There's no issue with actual construction time, cities just throw red tape at anything that doesn't conform to the suburban bullshit.
Municipalities can restrict massive homes if they want to by steering them to build multiplex. They absolutely can. Vancouver did that.
Burnaby needs to shut their mouth up and do the same.
Here's what happened in Burnaby: a friend of mine submitted a plan in 2023/2024 timeframe and somehow the City planner, during discussion, suggested that he's allowed to build big house.
Him and his architectural designer had to check and verify multiple times that it is allowed because in Vancouver, you cannot build bigger than Multiplex.
> They are okay with a home owner building a 5000 square foot place with 8 bedrooms, which itself causes the price of property to shoot up
This is incorrect. The market can only bear what they can bear. If you own a 50x120 lot that used to only be able to build up to 4000 sqft but now you can build 5500 sqft, you cannot sell that for way more because like it or not: you still live in a hood with tons of 50x120 lots: you're not that special just because your house is bigger than the regular 50x120 new build house but instead what would happen it that THIS special house will push down the rest.
You can also ask any builders and realtors what risk is associated to build and sell such product. I can guarantee you that nobody in their right mind wants to pull this off. They will build multiplexes instead.
My buddy decided to build his mega mansion because it is his lot and it is his money. Both me and the designer hinted that's not good RoI but hey... it's his money.
If you own a 50x120 lot that used to only be able to build up to 4000 sqft but now you can build 5500 sqft, you cannot sell that for way more because like it or not: you still live in a hood with tons of 50x120 lots
What I'm referring to isn't the land limits, it's actually *building* the large home.
Example:
- Living in a 2000 square foot home
- Land permits 4000 square feet max
- City then changes the land to allow 5500 square feet
- Owners tear down existing place and build 5200 square foot 8 bedroom home
^ The result of this new build is that the price the builder charges will skyrocket, because the square footage of the home counts towards purchase price. Larger home, larger purchase price (assuming all other things are equal).
This is why all over Canada you see people tearing down family homes and replacing them with "supersized" family homes and charging 80% more to sell them, versus the assessed value of the previous home.
Let me clarify because you clearly misunderstood my argument:
There's absolutely nothing wrong tearing down an old rundown shack and build a new home be it Single Family or Multi Family. What are you going to do? Renovate the shack for 50% of the cost of building new? That's just doesn't make any sense.
If Municipalities want to densify, they should INCENTIVIZE building Multiplex and DIS-INCENTIVIZE building Single Family.
City like Burnaby still INCENTIVIZE building Single Family by allowing land owner to build BIGGER HOUSE than what it was PRIOR to SSMUH:
Prior to SSMUH, on a regular Burnaby lot, you can build 3600-4500 sqft
After SSMUH, on the SAME LOT, you can build up to 5900 sqft lot
This is wrong.
City like Vancouver did the opposite: DIS-INCENTIVIZE building Single Family and INCENTIVIZE building Multiplex: They SHRUNK how much you can build if it's for Single Family and They INCREASE how much you can build for Multiplex.
So given the City of Burnaby example, they should:
Prior to SSMUH, on a regular Burnaby lot, you can build 3600-4500 sqft
After SSMUH, on the SAME LOT, the city should only allow you to build up to 3300 sqft (I made up the number to prove my point), that's almost 10% less of what it was previously
Allow to build bigger Multiplex than a single House. The more units, the more square foot to make the unit comfortable.
Given these facts, let me point out other things as well
Let's say up until 2022, the price of a NEWLY BUILT house in Burnaby is between $3.2-$3.8M on a standard lot (3600-4200 building sqft). Someone decided to build 5900 sqft house on the same lot size can't sell for $5M because the buyers don't see the Math like that. The most they can sell is probably $4M.
What that means is that the Math (MARKET) will disincentivize Developers to build such mansion because they have to SPEND more money to build bigger house but with LOWER MARGIN and HIGHER RISK.
"If Municipalities want to densify, they should INCENTIVIZE building Multiplex and DIS-INCENTIVIZE building Single Family."
This is my point. This mayor is whining about the provincial decision, all the while tolerating oversized housing.
There's absolutely nothing wrong tearing down an old rundown shack and build a new home be it Single Family or Multi Family.
Then why is the mayor of Burnaby whining about the latter? My point is to illustrate his double standard. He tolerates the massive SFH, but he whines about townhomes on the same lots. It's a double standard, he is arguing for the Provincial government to eliminate a densification opportunity. This is my point.
I'm not sure what your point is: NIMBY does not tolerate Massive Building be it SFH or Multi-Family. The resident isn't just whining about Multi-Family: they whine about Massive Building regardless the type.
Burnaby allows 12 meter high building as part of this SSMUH (doesn't matter if it's SFH or Multiplex) and the residents revolt against this.
12 meter high opens way to build 4 levels by the way.
In Burnaby, Massive Building exist because SSMUH. Without SSMUH, there is no Massive Building. We're back to 3600-4200 sqft (still big, but nobody complains because they accept the way it is).
The only additional complain was someone build 6 units townhomes in 50x120, 2 rows of 3 units, without even a single parking lot. Hilarities ensue and I can understand this. This is the part where BC Bill-44 overreach: it allows you to build multiplex without parking lot if it's within 400meter of FTN (frequent transit network). I fully disagree with this because the FTN definition here is any mode of transportation that is more frequent than 15 minutes (including small translink bus).
The point is very straightforward. You can't tolerate buildings the size of 6-unit townhomes / duplexes, yet say townhomes and duplexes are bad. That's a double standard that says: wealthy people or lucky people can profit even more if they wish, but this land should be of no use to a growing population.
Do these monster homes not have suites? Our old neighbourhood had lots of big houses but they all had one or two suites. Doesn’t that make it a multiplex?
City of Burnaby by-laws/policy language does little to differentiate Units vs Multiplex which is a shame.
That vagueness created an issue where some crazy homeowners decided to build 3 storeys Laneway and residents complain of these monster houses (warranted) causing City of Burnaby to reconsider limiting "Rear Building" which has an unintended side effect of causing certain multiplex setups to no longer be viable.
It was just clown show by the City just because they treated "units" as "units" instead of differentiating Units for Multiplex and Units for Main house (basement, laneway).
If you are not City of Burnaby resident, I encourage you to come by and drive around. The scale blew my mind and it's definitely bigger than what you can do compare to other municipalities. Cities like Delta, some parts of Surrey, some parts of Coquitlam naturally have larger lot to build giant mansions but City of Burnaby allows you to build vertical mansions on smaller lot.
I’ve seen the pictures and read the reviews. Only reason your Burnaby mayor is walking things back is because he doesn’t want to loose his job. One story in the ground and three up looks like hell. Even the new two story up rules are invasive for the neighbours.
Port Coquitlam is especially bad for this. On my street alone there's 5 new massive homes.. I wish we had a good mayor instead of a nepo baby wanabe populist.
Brad West is a nepo baby? I thought he was raised by a single mom raising two kids in near poverty because his dad died when he was 10? He's said that his mom getting a union job, which prevented them from going homeless is why he is such a big union supporter. He's mentioned this several times throughout the years. Has he been lying all of this time?
Here's an exact quote (edited to remove the um's and uh's):
"you know I think about my mom, you know as I said she was a cashier, we lost my dad when I was 10. He passed away when my sister was seven. My mom went got second job and just worked herself to the bone to try and provide a good life for my sister and I. I appreciate all the more now that I'm a father and I have two young sons. At the time I never really appreciated how much my mom was sacrificing so I could still play hockey and the things that I really enjoyed and same with my sister and so anyway she worked incredibly hard, our life changed for the better when she got a union job. She got a union job and then she only had to work one job, we got some benefits. So I've seen in my own life the benefit that can come from a collective agreement and the ability to get a fair shake for regular people."
It's just such a weird and sorta morbid thing to lie about too. It doesn't even make sense either, because Port Coquitlam is not where super wealthy people live and grow up.
Say what you want about West but a lot of people in Port Coquitlam respect the guy solely due to his background. He put in the work to make connections within the community despite his disadvantaged background, and uses his platform to advocate for the same folks from a labour (dare I say, social democratic/syndicalist) perspective. I sure was a big fan of his at first because of this.
Yep, that's an accurate take. But I think my emphasis is really: the Mayor of Burnaby well knows his community is home to large luxury homes and he's okay with that, but whines about the land serving more than just one wealthy family. That is where he's wrong.
It wasn't the provincial government creating the problem but you're right it has been decades since the federal government stopped funding housing. 1993 was when the money dried up I believe.
Municipalities have always been the problem with zoning bylaws. They were after WWII and they were from the late 60s to early 70s. Municipalities have zoning regulations that have been out of date for a half century. Whether it's for environmental protections that are unnecessary today (some, not all) or to keep poor people/others different from me away, it's always been municipalities.
I agree with you though it's been too long. Ottawa has to take the hit and town councils have to pound sand. There isn't a product that doesn't go down in price when the market is flooded.
Federally funded non-market housing was always a fairly marginal part of the picture. A meaningful one, but not the motive force in the mid century housing ecosystem some people would like it to have been.
the trajectory with 'zoning' (and I'll take that broadly to mean municipal land use practices rather than formal zoning bylaws par say) is important to keep mind of. Your mark 1 zoning code from the 1920s-1950s isn't that bad, because it's intended to be a real planning document that provides rule based formulas for what is or isn't allowed. Your typical first generation zoning bylaw makes provision for extensive multi-family districts and the land economics of the time often encourage landowners to petition for greater density to bail out flat or even falling land values. If you combine this with the extensive available greenfield land opening up war-time multi-family conversions and the limited enforcement capacity of the mid century city, it sorta works.
the zoning bylaw takes on a different character in the 1970s and 1980s, where several things happen - firstly the zoning bylaw becomes less of a plan to guide development and more of a tool to create leverage for the city to control the development process more tightly and extract money. Zoning stops being a real plan for growth and more of a pretextual hurdle for extraction. Secondly, the those mark-1 zoning bylaw provisions for apartments and close-in greenfield development start to run out, and lastly government becomes much less friendly to outward greenfield development, clogging a pressure valve in the land use system. The whole system sorta works in the 2000s until we reach the point where the remaining greenfield land is quite limited, but in the mean time the infill planning system has become hopelessly overdone
What percentage of these signatories are homeowners, versus renters. Let's be real, only one of these groups are really considered residents by these mayors.
More or less. One of the glaringly stupid problems of housing in Vancouver and Burnaby is all this wasted space in actual house / multi-family designs, never mind lot sizes. Take three of these lots, build a three to five story building with 1200-1500sq ft floors and a garage big enough for 3-5 families vehicles.
Like As much as I hated the design of the townhouse I rented at one time, it was 8 units on a corner lot, and that meant that there were 8 stairwells in the building and none of them went into the basement. Very poor design. Now had it just been 3 or 4 floors to begin with each floor could have been half the lot size with only one shared stairwell dividing them, which would have been a much more efficient use of space, and every room could have a window. What sucked about that specific lot was the bus stop was right in front of it and the bus driver would idle for an hour in front of the townhouse every day.
Suffice it to say the Province's plan basically stopped too short of saying what should go into spaces other than "Transit Oriented Development" factors. It's fine to say "this property is 50m from a bus stop, so it should be a 6 story tower" but that assumes the bus stop will always be there. Likewise for the Skytrain stops. Some stops like Nanaimo, 29th Ave and Patterson are literately just SFH's or Parks. Are you really going to replace the park with a tower?
Suffice it to say the Province's plan basically stopped too short of saying what should go into spaces other than "Transit Oriented Development" factors. It's fine to say "this property is 50m from a bus stop, so it should be a 6 story tower" but that assumes the bus stop will always be there. Likewise for the Skytrain stops. Some stops like Nanaimo, 29th Ave and Patterson are literately just SFH's or Parks. Are you really going to replace the park with a tower?
To your first point, what they defined as TOD is a lot more narrow than just any bus stop, it's basically Skytrain and a very limited number of highly served bus stops. To your second point, the legislation only covers residentially zoned property, so industrial and other uses are not impacted unless they are rezoned.
it's not even that the municipalities don't have any intention to fix the problem, many of them even mean well.
But they don't understand the nature of the problem (systematic underbuilding and treating housing as a revenue generator) and consequently fail to have the tools to fix anything.
The municipalities' idea of how to address the housing supply problem is just to do the exact same thing they were already doing just harder, and they don't have the methodological tools to understand why it isn't working
Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West, a longtime New Democrat, hammered Eby for upending decades of community planning by veering into the job of locally elected councils.
“The province’s housing legislation has been one of the most ill-conceived, poorly thought-out policy initiatives that this province has ever suffered under,” said West.
“Rather than unleashing more housing units like the province promised, it’s unleashed chaos. The housing market has never been more depressed than right now under the province’s legislation. It represents probably the most remarkable power grab by a premier in the province’s history.”
Is Brad West trying to say that it’s a bad thing that housing is getting cheaper?
For the life of me, I will never understand why this guy seems to be so well liked.
“I get it. In 50 years, we might have to replace a piece of infrastructure that's going to be very expensive, and it is responsible to put money away for that,” he said.
“But at the same time, you have to balance that with the current taxpayer's ability to pay.”
He’s like a bad strata president that wants to keep strata fees low only to have to pay massive special assessments 10-15 years later and making sure he gets out before that happens.
And since he is a mayor with a decent public profile relative to his position, when the time comes for major repairs he can whine and complain about how the province needs to pay for infrastructure or his city will implode. Unfortunately, it will probably work. That's of course if he's still around.
And where is this "power grab"? Is it a "power grab" to shift real estate away from speculators? Is it a "power grab" to help realize housing that will allow more sustainable housing stock both economically and environmentally?
Did West support Clarke's approach to housing that focused on explosive value growth through attracting foreign real estate speculation and money laundering?
The speculators are the ones who want the rezoning to happen as they have already bought up the single family properties in the radius zones hoping to 3-5x their investments via land assemblies
That's not speculation if they are acting on government policy that's been implemented, especially as the housing stock they are likely to build will be much more likely to focus on actually housing needs than tiny condos no one wants to actually live in. Land assemblies that lead to gentle density solutions will make housing more affordable in a form that works better for more people. Developers are not necessarily speculators, especially if they are not funding properties through future value and are instead focused on current allowances and fulfilling government direction.
Good. This is how we get more supply. This is exactly the intention of the policy. Incentivize people to sell single family homes to land assemblies and build Higher density. We need to cover this city in mid rises. There is so much building to do. We need more of this not less.
Ton of these speculators are going bankrupt right now. Development land value is in the toilet, in Vancouver, It’s often close to or below single-family home land values. Strata wind up’s have all blown up for the same reason.
Power grab... Does this guy not realize the Province has authority over municipalities? What does he think he is, the prime minister of port Coquitlam? lol
Housing prices are decreasing in every province. British Columbia has the lowest percentage drop. You can easily find statistics on this by doing a Google search.
Saskatchewan seems to have taken the mantle as the hottest housing market in the country this year, with annual price growth in excess of 10% in four of eight months so far.
...
The same forces at play in Saskatchewan (namely relatively firm job/population growth and low listings) are shaping solid price gains in Manitoba.
...
Despite a deteriorating economic backdrop and eroded affordability, Quebec’s housing market has shown some surprising resilience....tight conditions should keep price growth robust in the near term, although we see Quebec’s quarterly price growth easing in the back half of next year.
...
Housing markets in the Atlantic region share some features, including generally tight conditions with low levels of supply, and significant affordability deteriorations in the post-pandemic world. However, sales levels are holding up relatively well in PEI and Newfoundland and Labrador.
...
B.C. and Ontario remain the weakest housing markets in the country and are the only two provinces where prices are likely to decline this year. With listings above their long-term norms, buyers have plenty of choice and the upper hand in negotiations (Chart 2). As such, price growth is likely to stay weak through much of 2026...
BC is second only to Ontario in terms of property value decrease over the past year. Every other province, except Manitoba has seen increased property value over the past year.
There's a lot of evidence that Ontario's negative housing values are being driven by economic impacts of Trump's tariffs than any provincial policy. BC is doing very well with a lot of economic indicators showing we are headed in a positive direction for housing, health care, economic well being, etc. Yes, the situation remains untenable for a lot of folks, but Eby and the NDP are doing a fantastic job in leading the province towards better stability.
The whole reason Eby had to do this legislation was because municipalities refused to build housing after repeatedly being asked to do so. Why would municipalities not go back to their old ways again? We need housing and there are many municipalities who don’t hear the urgency.
Not really! Their internal polling was telling them that their housing policy was popular and winning them votes
The public at large are generally much less weird about housing the mirage of the public created by the self-selected sub population that likes to frivolously whinge all the time. Those people aren’t actually that numerous people just assumed they were
I’ve paid a lot of attention to this particular question in an attempt to avoid the temptation to believe that The People Secretly Agree With Me, and where I think I land is that the public are ok with lowrise infill in most places, think the apartment ban is kind of crazy, and support strategic higher order densification in some places
There is a reason why we will have spent the last three cycles tossing out incumbents and replacing them with people promising modest reforms only to toss them out again four years later
What I mean is that we get local government failing to solve the problem, who are succeeded by cautious local government figures who are over-afraid of the nimbys who thus fail to solve the problem
The province wants densification in existing towns because it brings higher provincial income taxes without the infrastructure outlay of a more dispersed population.
Municipalities also want densification inside their own towns because it brings higher property taxes. They need to cater to property owners to win elections though, so they rally nimbyism to get the vote while Eby is the "big bad guy for plowing in more population" into their cities.
Densification give provincial and municipal governments higher income for their own wages and pensions because it adds taxes without the least infrastructure spending.
It's the people that compromise:
- Existing home owners see comfortable neighbourhoods with big trees and parks torn down and replaced with countless 5-over-1s and cheap 3-story apartments.
- New young buyers and immigrants pay a fortune to live in an densified 5-over-1 or cheap 3-story apartment where they can hear their neighbour taking a dump.
Hell no to both! There's a third option that doesn't compromise, and that's expanding laterally in our massive province. More towns. This does require province infrastructure expenditure (and less funds for their own benefits, raises, and pensions). Bringing citizens to new towns also doesn't add to properties in existing established cities - so the local mayors aren't getting a big boost on property tax multiplies with densification.
Edit: looking at the downvotes, sounds like there's a desire to live in 5-over-1s and cheap 3-story apartments.
This is just a negative spin on the idea that cities use resources more efficiently than rural areas. Of course cities and provinces want more population with less infrastructure. Isn’t that what everyone wants?
Dense areas have been subsidizing the cost of infrastructure for low density / rural areas for decades, and I think we’re seeing it finally start to change a bit.
Of course densification around infrastructure maximizes its efficiency.
I'll ask you a question: is it possible to achieve the maximum infrastructure efficiency while also maximizing the quality of lives of those in the densified area?
Because it can always get even more dense, a lot more dense! Tokyo rents coffin type "sleeping slots" for the night.
What if I gave you ample money, your favorite food, and luxury living but the only catch was you had to live in 300 sq ft?
Politicians will gladly re-zone smaller and smaller partitions to maximize tax revenue, while not being densified themselves.
I've literally watched city councils give themselves 15% raises, 17% raises, etc.. because of increases property tax revenue. At some point, the extra property tax just goes to an ever-bloating city management structure and they withhold as much as possible from the actual hard workers at the end of the stick (hospital staff, teachers, infrastructure crews, etc..)
This is exactly it. The NDP knows that their policy on this is hugely popular, regardless of what municipalities and the NIMBY groups that control them want people to think.
It would be nice if, voluntarily, cities would take this on. But the case is simple, that aside from some outstanding cities that really led the way here, the vast majority of municipalities in the province were unable or unwilling to make these necessary changes, and we had to take that step.
Now do it for social and supportive housing. Signed - An Outstanding City.
As he should. This is pure political theatre from the mayors/council who don't want to own any of the pushback from wealthy detached homeowners who are the most likely to vote in municipal elections.
"has disrupted quiet residential neighbourhoods and led to persistent parking issues."
"and then you look at the construction and development industry right now, it’s all on pause.”
These things can't both co-exist you numbskulls. It can't both be unleashing a torrent of homebuilding that is causing strains on parking and disrupting neighbours *AND* causing construction/development to grind to a halt. If it's ground to a halt, why would there be any parking issues?
While I have no love for Ken Sim usually, I have to give him some credit that he isn't jumping into that clown car.
really does read like someone who has some unstated, unrelated beef with Eby and doesn't have enough editorial oversight for it to not come through in his work
I watched as housing become more and more unaffordable, while these municipalities drag their feets, young adults are being priced out of their cities. Now that a party came up with a solution (not a perfect one) and everyone under the sun cares about schools, hospitals and traffic being impacted. If you want suburban living, go live in a suburb, do not deny us our future.
Well without building the necessary schools. Housing. Road upgrades. transit. Sewage disposal etc etc. you still wont have a future. But minor details.
schools are one of the few things I will generally concede the province has been dropping the ball on. The Ministry incompetently refuses to plan beyond current need
not just schools. Infrastructure like sewage treatment. Roads. Hospitals. Parks. Schools. But just keep cramming towers and more people in. It'll end well. Trust us. :/
Mike Hurley here in Burnaby has been all over his social media freaking out about how provincial zoning laws are causing everyone's property values to go up.
Yeah, you read that right.
He's fear-mongering over the higher property taxes due to those increased valuations. As if the increased taxes (which the municipality controls) are this giant threat to all these people who now own property worth millions and millionsmore.
The push back being from metro Vancouver mayors is even worse. When smaller communities throughout BC are essentially saying "ok, we got the memo, time to take serious strides to help address the ongoing affordability concerns by allowing some modest density" and the largest population center is kicking and screaming about very modest density requirements (especially on the global scale) it's tantamount to not wanting to address the most important issue stated by their residents for the past decade or more. The mayors seem to be more upset about their self perception as powerful individuals than actually doing good by their constituents. I hope the majority of them are without jobs come this time next year (after the municipal elections).
the largest population center is kicking and screaming about very modest density requirements (especially on the global scale) it's tantamount to not wanting to address the most important issue stated by their residents for the past decade or more. The mayors seem to be more upset about their self perception as powerful individuals than actually doing good by their constituents. I hope the majority of them are without jobs come this time next year
I’d understand Belcarra, Anmore and Lions Bay. They are fairly in the wild and some don’t have municipal water, which is tricky when your residents are dependent on a creek during a climate crisis (solution is just decreasing the grants these places receive and using that money to build in better locations, they are free to take care of themselves), not to mention the risks regarding natural disasters. I am also against densification where wildlife is very active, but the rest doesn’t have any excuse.
None of these municipalities zoning bylaws limit the extent of development, except for how many units are allowed. You can build a 25,000 sqft home covered with invasive species and a permitter fence that destroys wildlife corridors, but try to put up a 4-plex with 3,500 sqft between all 4 units and somehow it's the end of the world. There are many ways to mitigate environmental impacts and build better water management strategies, but I'm not seeing much action on those front, as "unit density" is used as a proxy.
this is such a great point - people pretend that nimby building regulations do something they don't do. It's sort of like large lot regs, which just ensure that the habitat is broken up in acre-sized fences
Oh I agree. Their excuses are more about nimbyism than any of the concerns I mentioned. The difference between the two is though you are more likely to evacuate 1000 people than 4000 people in a wildfire where there is only one exit which could be closed due to fire anyway. But in your example 25000 sqft house is more "the end of the world" situation although I don’t believe it exists in this towns (not sure) since the land is quite limited and there is barely any empty land left in places like Lions Bay at this point.
Rob Shaw will always make the greatest possible effort to suck up to the most wrong-headed politicians in the province. It's pretty much a tradition at this point.
i dont think its that they own houses, its that they like their six digit salaries and the power city hall has over developers in their muni. And because of how few people come out to vote its almost always the NIMBY single family home owners who are their core voting block.
Its a shame too that pro-density people never decided to pick one muni - any muni will do really - and win an election there to offer an alternative governance where rapid buildout of missing middle type homes could show it works.
I'm curious as to others, but my small-ish BC town is building a lot right now. So many more apartments and condos popping up. Are others noticing the same in their town/city?
To how it was before the law changes. Are they making an impact? Have others noticed new construction in their areas since Eby's law changes or has there been little change?
one of the things is that development tends to happen in highly visible locations for both policy and economic reasons. But the real measure would be how many actual units and how much floor space has been finished in your community per capita.
All this backlash: it shows the plan is working. City council are captured by older NIMBY single family home owners. Apartments are illegal in most parts of Metro Vancouver.
Try telling a family that they can't live in Metro Vancouver because they can't afford a $3m home and that you're blocking construction of a condo, "cause 'neighbourhood character.'"
Not to mention most apartment projects get pushed to busy arterials and highways where no one wants to live.
Preposterous. Keep making duplexes and apartments legal.
I hope Eby has the balls to actually pick this fight - these mayors sit around and do nothing because their core voter is the NIMBY single family home owner who wants price appreciation to keep happening. They are squeeling now because prices are going 10% every year and selling is a lot harder and the various city halls cant just reach into the developers pockets with even more fees.
It’s too bad that these mayors can’t just take the bull by the horns and lead. Why not create a duplex or triplex blueprint that’s cheap and makes everyone happy. Like a new Vancouver special, but multi unit. With parking. Then with the property taxes, you build more infrastructure? No? Is that not how this works?
Most people living in multi unit housing don’t even have cars. Or kids. They’re just trying to find housing they can afford that’s somewhat close to transit.
Municipalities have all their power delegated from the province. The municipalities only have power because the province lets them. The province delegates responsibilities to local municipalities, as they are better situated to respond to local needs and provide local services. They have consistently failed to do so regarding housing, and therefore the province has had to step in. Municipal housing policy has become extremely inequitable, with wealthy homeowners having far more power than people with housing insecurity.
The province has actually approached this very sensibly and diplomatically. The province provides major funding to every municipality in BC, which is heavily relied on. The province could have said “fix your housing policy or we withhold funding.” This would have required the muni politicians to eat the political fall out, but instead the province is willing to take the ill will.
I cannot figure out the complaints from municipalities about lack of provincial funding to go along with housing mandates. The province also gave municipalities the tools to raise their own revenues to offset the cost of infrastructure.
I am not saying "growth pays for growth" is perfect but if a mayor wants to go in that direction the tools exist already to handle that kind of model without further injections from the province.
Rushing housing isn't always good. You end up with overcrowded local infrastructure like schools and community centres. And Eby shouldn't be brushing off other levels of government. He only has control of the legislature by 1 paltry seat. He should be very humble and very interested in listening to others.
We do have an affordability crisis and action is needed. But it still needs to be action that is helping locals. There's a new 30 bedroom SFH monstrosity in my neighbourhood but it's tenants are 100% tourists. That building is actually hurting locals.
Good, they don't deserve a second thought. The ones who haven't focused on anything other than posturing and NIMBYism don't deserve the Province's attention.
I like Brad West and I get Mayors want more say over development than these new rules allow but I don't get his point. Dont we want houses to depress in value? or am i misreading what hes saying...
Well lemme fill you in... Raising property taxes to a high level only drives down property values which = lower tax revenue.
Basically cancel each other out. So what's the solution?
On laughable note, no politician is going to have a platform of high taxes for all property owners. They won't get in so maybe back to the drawing board?
you can in fact raise property taxes on the kind of home ownership you want to discourage, inefficient single family homes with giant yards, and lower costs on the kind of home ownership you want, 5-6 story apartment blocks.
So we circle back to apartments that families can't live in, right back to where we started. If you think taxing everyone to death is the answer wait until rents go thru the roof. For every action is a reaction.
Yup. Builders would love to build family sized townhouses and multiplexes problem is the city made them illegal. Province finally had enough and pushed through SSMUH but many cities still heavily restrict family friendly infill housing.
Eby will lose the next election. Mark my words. He needs to go. This policy is stupid. Stay in your lane. He will not get my vote as he continues to shove things like this down our throats without any consultations.
It's pretty telling that Eby just barely scraped by an election win against a fractured and in-fighting political party who hadn't even held a seat since their revival as a party 20 years ago. He literally lost the NDP 10 seats, in a legislature that expanded by 6 seats on this election cycle. People weren't voting for the conservatives as much as they were voting against Eby.
That's a pretty glaring indication that he and his policies are not going over well with the people here.
The election results has almost nothing to do with him. A lot of people thought they were voting Trudeau out. Everyone was all mad about immigration back then. Now that the Feds have made changes, the next election will be different.
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In Brief:
Imo the cities have lost all right to manage their zoning and all credibility for pushing back on this stuff. I'm glad they are getting fully ignored
Municipalities: please trust us to fix a problem we have no intention to fix without force and have spent literal decades crafting into creation. We swear we won't just go back to nimby protectionism that only benefits the wealthy.
Honestly if these municipalities had every intention to approve more housing rapidly they wouldn't be complaining about goals.
Have you noticed they are mentioning nothing of the massive homes? They are okay with a home owner building a 5000 square foot place with 8 bedrooms, which itself causes the price of property to shoot up, but allow something with 6 bedrooms with separate entrances - nope, absolutely not. They reject this for some reason.
Takes less time for a home to go from tear down into a McMansion, than getting approval to split the lot so you can build two smaller SFHs. Happened to most of my block. There's no issue with actual construction time, cities just throw red tape at anything that doesn't conform to the suburban bullshit.
Municipalities can restrict massive homes if they want to by steering them to build multiplex. They absolutely can. Vancouver did that.
Burnaby needs to shut their mouth up and do the same.
Here's what happened in Burnaby: a friend of mine submitted a plan in 2023/2024 timeframe and somehow the City planner, during discussion, suggested that he's allowed to build big house.
Him and his architectural designer had to check and verify multiple times that it is allowed because in Vancouver, you cannot build bigger than Multiplex.
> They are okay with a home owner building a 5000 square foot place with 8 bedrooms, which itself causes the price of property to shoot up
This is incorrect. The market can only bear what they can bear. If you own a 50x120 lot that used to only be able to build up to 4000 sqft but now you can build 5500 sqft, you cannot sell that for way more because like it or not: you still live in a hood with tons of 50x120 lots: you're not that special just because your house is bigger than the regular 50x120 new build house but instead what would happen it that THIS special house will push down the rest.
You can also ask any builders and realtors what risk is associated to build and sell such product. I can guarantee you that nobody in their right mind wants to pull this off. They will build multiplexes instead.
My buddy decided to build his mega mansion because it is his lot and it is his money. Both me and the designer hinted that's not good RoI but hey... it's his money.
What I'm referring to isn't the land limits, it's actually *building* the large home.
Example:
- Living in a 2000 square foot home
- Land permits 4000 square feet max
- City then changes the land to allow 5500 square feet
- Owners tear down existing place and build 5200 square foot 8 bedroom home
^ The result of this new build is that the price the builder charges will skyrocket, because the square footage of the home counts towards purchase price. Larger home, larger purchase price (assuming all other things are equal).
This is why all over Canada you see people tearing down family homes and replacing them with "supersized" family homes and charging 80% more to sell them, versus the assessed value of the previous home.
Let me clarify because you clearly misunderstood my argument:
There's absolutely nothing wrong tearing down an old rundown shack and build a new home be it Single Family or Multi Family. What are you going to do? Renovate the shack for 50% of the cost of building new? That's just doesn't make any sense.
If Municipalities want to densify, they should INCENTIVIZE building Multiplex and DIS-INCENTIVIZE building Single Family.
City like Burnaby still INCENTIVIZE building Single Family by allowing land owner to build BIGGER HOUSE than what it was PRIOR to SSMUH:
This is wrong.
City like Vancouver did the opposite: DIS-INCENTIVIZE building Single Family and INCENTIVIZE building Multiplex: They SHRUNK how much you can build if it's for Single Family and They INCREASE how much you can build for Multiplex.
So given the City of Burnaby example, they should:
Given these facts, let me point out other things as well
Let's say up until 2022, the price of a NEWLY BUILT house in Burnaby is between $3.2-$3.8M on a standard lot (3600-4200 building sqft). Someone decided to build 5900 sqft house on the same lot size can't sell for $5M because the buyers don't see the Math like that. The most they can sell is probably $4M.
What that means is that the Math (MARKET) will disincentivize Developers to build such mansion because they have to SPEND more money to build bigger house but with LOWER MARGIN and HIGHER RISK.
I mean (excessive use of caps not withstanding...
"If Municipalities want to densify, they should INCENTIVIZE building Multiplex and DIS-INCENTIVIZE building Single Family."
This is my point. This mayor is whining about the provincial decision, all the while tolerating oversized housing.
Then why is the mayor of Burnaby whining about the latter? My point is to illustrate his double standard. He tolerates the massive SFH, but he whines about townhomes on the same lots. It's a double standard, he is arguing for the Provincial government to eliminate a densification opportunity. This is my point.
I'm not sure what your point is: NIMBY does not tolerate Massive Building be it SFH or Multi-Family. The resident isn't just whining about Multi-Family: they whine about Massive Building regardless the type.
Burnaby allows 12 meter high building as part of this SSMUH (doesn't matter if it's SFH or Multiplex) and the residents revolt against this.
12 meter high opens way to build 4 levels by the way.
In Burnaby, Massive Building exist because SSMUH. Without SSMUH, there is no Massive Building. We're back to 3600-4200 sqft (still big, but nobody complains because they accept the way it is).
The only additional complain was someone build 6 units townhomes in 50x120, 2 rows of 3 units, without even a single parking lot. Hilarities ensue and I can understand this. This is the part where BC Bill-44 overreach: it allows you to build multiplex without parking lot if it's within 400meter of FTN (frequent transit network). I fully disagree with this because the FTN definition here is any mode of transportation that is more frequent than 15 minutes (including small translink bus).
The point is very straightforward. You can't tolerate buildings the size of 6-unit townhomes / duplexes, yet say townhomes and duplexes are bad. That's a double standard that says: wealthy people or lucky people can profit even more if they wish, but this land should be of no use to a growing population.
Wait... I'm confuse what you're trying to say here:
"Can't Tolerate 6 units townhomes/duplexes"
"Say townhomes and duplexes are bad"
"double standards"
I don't get your argument. Where is the double standard here?
Besides, have you seen these Massive Buildings?
If you still haven't figured it out by now... it's probably intentional.
Do these monster homes not have suites? Our old neighbourhood had lots of big houses but they all had one or two suites. Doesn’t that make it a multiplex?
That depends on the definition of "multiplex".
City of Burnaby by-laws/policy language does little to differentiate Units vs Multiplex which is a shame.
That vagueness created an issue where some crazy homeowners decided to build 3 storeys Laneway and residents complain of these monster houses (warranted) causing City of Burnaby to reconsider limiting "Rear Building" which has an unintended side effect of causing certain multiplex setups to no longer be viable.
It was just clown show by the City just because they treated "units" as "units" instead of differentiating Units for Multiplex and Units for Main house (basement, laneway).
If you are not City of Burnaby resident, I encourage you to come by and drive around. The scale blew my mind and it's definitely bigger than what you can do compare to other municipalities. Cities like Delta, some parts of Surrey, some parts of Coquitlam naturally have larger lot to build giant mansions but City of Burnaby allows you to build vertical mansions on smaller lot.
I’ve seen the pictures and read the reviews. Only reason your Burnaby mayor is walking things back is because he doesn’t want to loose his job. One story in the ground and three up looks like hell. Even the new two story up rules are invasive for the neighbours.
See: https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/1pnd52u/comment/nu74uyq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button for what I mean.
Port Coquitlam is especially bad for this. On my street alone there's 5 new massive homes.. I wish we had a good mayor instead of a nepo baby wanabe populist.
Brad West is a nepo baby? I thought he was raised by a single mom raising two kids in near poverty because his dad died when he was 10? He's said that his mom getting a union job, which prevented them from going homeless is why he is such a big union supporter. He's mentioned this several times throughout the years. Has he been lying all of this time?
Here's an exact quote (edited to remove the um's and uh's):
ya there's a lot wrong with West (like his claiming to be working to six figure jobs at the same time) but this isn't one i'm aware of.
It's just such a weird and sorta morbid thing to lie about too. It doesn't even make sense either, because Port Coquitlam is not where super wealthy people live and grow up.
Say what you want about West but a lot of people in Port Coquitlam respect the guy solely due to his background. He put in the work to make connections within the community despite his disadvantaged background, and uses his platform to advocate for the same folks from a labour (dare I say, social democratic/syndicalist) perspective. I sure was a big fan of his at first because of this.
try to beat West then
that’s what elections are for
show poco all they’re missing out not having you as mayor
all talk no walk
there's nothing all that wrong with a large house IMO. as often they become de-facto multi-family housing over time if permitted to.
it's the policies that privilege owning that large house over the 6 unit townhouse complex that are the problem.
Yep, that's an accurate take. But I think my emphasis is really: the Mayor of Burnaby well knows his community is home to large luxury homes and he's okay with that, but whines about the land serving more than just one wealthy family. That is where he's wrong.
It wasn't the provincial government creating the problem but you're right it has been decades since the federal government stopped funding housing. 1993 was when the money dried up I believe.
Municipalities have always been the problem with zoning bylaws. They were after WWII and they were from the late 60s to early 70s. Municipalities have zoning regulations that have been out of date for a half century. Whether it's for environmental protections that are unnecessary today (some, not all) or to keep poor people/others different from me away, it's always been municipalities.
I agree with you though it's been too long. Ottawa has to take the hit and town councils have to pound sand. There isn't a product that doesn't go down in price when the market is flooded.
Federally funded non-market housing was always a fairly marginal part of the picture. A meaningful one, but not the motive force in the mid century housing ecosystem some people would like it to have been.
the trajectory with 'zoning' (and I'll take that broadly to mean municipal land use practices rather than formal zoning bylaws par say) is important to keep mind of. Your mark 1 zoning code from the 1920s-1950s isn't that bad, because it's intended to be a real planning document that provides rule based formulas for what is or isn't allowed. Your typical first generation zoning bylaw makes provision for extensive multi-family districts and the land economics of the time often encourage landowners to petition for greater density to bail out flat or even falling land values. If you combine this with the extensive available greenfield land opening up war-time multi-family conversions and the limited enforcement capacity of the mid century city, it sorta works.
the zoning bylaw takes on a different character in the 1970s and 1980s, where several things happen - firstly the zoning bylaw becomes less of a plan to guide development and more of a tool to create leverage for the city to control the development process more tightly and extract money. Zoning stops being a real plan for growth and more of a pretextual hurdle for extraction. Secondly, the those mark-1 zoning bylaw provisions for apartments and close-in greenfield development start to run out, and lastly government becomes much less friendly to outward greenfield development, clogging a pressure valve in the land use system. The whole system sorta works in the 2000s until we reach the point where the remaining greenfield land is quite limited, but in the mean time the infill planning system has become hopelessly overdone
Wow thanks for the reply!
Don't forget politics in this.
Mayors can now point at this letter to Eby when local residents complain to them.
What percentage of these signatories are homeowners, versus renters. Let's be real, only one of these groups are really considered residents by these mayors.
More or less. One of the glaringly stupid problems of housing in Vancouver and Burnaby is all this wasted space in actual house / multi-family designs, never mind lot sizes. Take three of these lots, build a three to five story building with 1200-1500sq ft floors and a garage big enough for 3-5 families vehicles.
Like As much as I hated the design of the townhouse I rented at one time, it was 8 units on a corner lot, and that meant that there were 8 stairwells in the building and none of them went into the basement. Very poor design. Now had it just been 3 or 4 floors to begin with each floor could have been half the lot size with only one shared stairwell dividing them, which would have been a much more efficient use of space, and every room could have a window. What sucked about that specific lot was the bus stop was right in front of it and the bus driver would idle for an hour in front of the townhouse every day.
Suffice it to say the Province's plan basically stopped too short of saying what should go into spaces other than "Transit Oriented Development" factors. It's fine to say "this property is 50m from a bus stop, so it should be a 6 story tower" but that assumes the bus stop will always be there. Likewise for the Skytrain stops. Some stops like Nanaimo, 29th Ave and Patterson are literately just SFH's or Parks. Are you really going to replace the park with a tower?
To your first point, what they defined as TOD is a lot more narrow than just any bus stop, it's basically Skytrain and a very limited number of highly served bus stops. To your second point, the legislation only covers residentially zoned property, so industrial and other uses are not impacted unless they are rezoned.
it's not even that the municipalities don't have any intention to fix the problem, many of them even mean well.
But they don't understand the nature of the problem (systematic underbuilding and treating housing as a revenue generator) and consequently fail to have the tools to fix anything.
The municipalities' idea of how to address the housing supply problem is just to do the exact same thing they were already doing just harder, and they don't have the methodological tools to understand why it isn't working
Is Brad West trying to say that it’s a bad thing that housing is getting cheaper?
For the life of me, I will never understand why this guy seems to be so well liked.
Because he often comments on things outside of his duties as mayor and constantly compares how great his city is versus Vancouver.
He also keeps taxes low by having some of the lowest reserves in Metro Vancouver.
https://subscriptions.cbc.ca/newsletter_static/messages/metromatters/2023-03-04/
He’s like a bad strata president that wants to keep strata fees low only to have to pay massive special assessments 10-15 years later and making sure he gets out before that happens.
As someone living this scenario first hand, yes, and it sucks.
And since he is a mayor with a decent public profile relative to his position, when the time comes for major repairs he can whine and complain about how the province needs to pay for infrastructure or his city will implode. Unfortunately, it will probably work. That's of course if he's still around.
He sounds like a boomer on a Strata Council.
the boomers on my strata council stock a lot of money away and take good care of the place thankfully
Different boomers! 👍🙂
Brad West is pretty suspicious after appearing in an Aaron Gunn video.
Dude has been spouting alt-right dogwhistles and showing up for BC Proud since he got into power.
And where is this "power grab"? Is it a "power grab" to shift real estate away from speculators? Is it a "power grab" to help realize housing that will allow more sustainable housing stock both economically and environmentally?
Did West support Clarke's approach to housing that focused on explosive value growth through attracting foreign real estate speculation and money laundering?
The speculators are the ones who want the rezoning to happen as they have already bought up the single family properties in the radius zones hoping to 3-5x their investments via land assemblies
That's not speculation if they are acting on government policy that's been implemented, especially as the housing stock they are likely to build will be much more likely to focus on actually housing needs than tiny condos no one wants to actually live in. Land assemblies that lead to gentle density solutions will make housing more affordable in a form that works better for more people. Developers are not necessarily speculators, especially if they are not funding properties through future value and are instead focused on current allowances and fulfilling government direction.
Good. This is how we get more supply. This is exactly the intention of the policy. Incentivize people to sell single family homes to land assemblies and build Higher density. We need to cover this city in mid rises. There is so much building to do. We need more of this not less.
Ton of these speculators are going bankrupt right now. Development land value is in the toilet, in Vancouver, It’s often close to or below single-family home land values. Strata wind up’s have all blown up for the same reason.
Power grab... Does this guy not realize the Province has authority over municipalities? What does he think he is, the prime minister of port Coquitlam? lol
the 'chaos' is local government deciding that they had to do everything the same way they were doing it before, just harder
Housing prices are decreasing in every province. British Columbia has the lowest percentage drop. You can easily find statistics on this by doing a Google search.
I googled it and it showed the exact opposite?
Adding what I found:
Date Published: October 2, 2025:
https://economics.td.com/ca-provincial-housing-outlook
https://www.crea.ca/housing-market-stats/canadian-housing-market-stats/national-price-map/
BC is second only to Ontario in terms of property value decrease over the past year. Every other province, except Manitoba has seen increased property value over the past year.
There's a lot of evidence that Ontario's negative housing values are being driven by economic impacts of Trump's tariffs than any provincial policy. BC is doing very well with a lot of economic indicators showing we are headed in a positive direction for housing, health care, economic well being, etc. Yes, the situation remains untenable for a lot of folks, but Eby and the NDP are doing a fantastic job in leading the province towards better stability.
The whole reason Eby had to do this legislation was because municipalities refused to build housing after repeatedly being asked to do so. Why would municipalities not go back to their old ways again? We need housing and there are many municipalities who don’t hear the urgency.
The municipalities want 100% discretion and 0% responsibility for outcomes and you just can’t let institutions work that way
This is why Eby wins elections. 🗳️
It actually is. Cracking down on the municipalities’ embedded nimbyism is something the public wants them to do more of
The public is incredibly divided. For every young person wanting an affordable home there’s an old crust who wants 0 densification ever
Not really! Their internal polling was telling them that their housing policy was popular and winning them votes
The public at large are generally much less weird about housing the mirage of the public created by the self-selected sub population that likes to frivolously whinge all the time. Those people aren’t actually that numerous people just assumed they were
I’ve paid a lot of attention to this particular question in an attempt to avoid the temptation to believe that The People Secretly Agree With Me, and where I think I land is that the public are ok with lowrise infill in most places, think the apartment ban is kind of crazy, and support strategic higher order densification in some places
Unfortunately, that subsection of* the population are the ones who tend to vote in local elections.
True, but less than politicos believe
There is a reason why we will have spent the last three cycles tossing out incumbents and replacing them with people promising modest reforms only to toss them out again four years later
Agreed, and turnover in municipal leadership shouldn't be Eby's concern when making provincial housing policy either.
What I mean is that we get local government failing to solve the problem, who are succeeded by cautious local government figures who are over-afraid of the nimbys who thus fail to solve the problem
I am the polling.
Why should the old crust get a say then?? They already won their lottery. If they don't like the density they can sell n move some where rural
The province wants densification in existing towns because it brings higher provincial income taxes without the infrastructure outlay of a more dispersed population.
Municipalities also want densification inside their own towns because it brings higher property taxes. They need to cater to property owners to win elections though, so they rally nimbyism to get the vote while Eby is the "big bad guy for plowing in more population" into their cities.
Densification give provincial and municipal governments higher income for their own wages and pensions because it adds taxes without the least infrastructure spending.
It's the people that compromise:
- Existing home owners see comfortable neighbourhoods with big trees and parks torn down and replaced with countless 5-over-1s and cheap 3-story apartments.
- New young buyers and immigrants pay a fortune to live in an densified 5-over-1 or cheap 3-story apartment where they can hear their neighbour taking a dump.
Hell no to both! There's a third option that doesn't compromise, and that's expanding laterally in our massive province. More towns. This does require province infrastructure expenditure (and less funds for their own benefits, raises, and pensions). Bringing citizens to new towns also doesn't add to properties in existing established cities - so the local mayors aren't getting a big boost on property tax multiplies with densification.
Edit: looking at the downvotes, sounds like there's a desire to live in 5-over-1s and cheap 3-story apartments.
This is just a negative spin on the idea that cities use resources more efficiently than rural areas. Of course cities and provinces want more population with less infrastructure. Isn’t that what everyone wants?
Dense areas have been subsidizing the cost of infrastructure for low density / rural areas for decades, and I think we’re seeing it finally start to change a bit.
Of course densification around infrastructure maximizes its efficiency.
I'll ask you a question: is it possible to achieve the maximum infrastructure efficiency while also maximizing the quality of lives of those in the densified area?
Because it can always get even more dense, a lot more dense! Tokyo rents coffin type "sleeping slots" for the night.
What if I gave you ample money, your favorite food, and luxury living but the only catch was you had to live in 300 sq ft?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-old-experiment-with-mice-led-to-bleak-predictions-for-humanitys-future-180954423/
Politicians will gladly re-zone smaller and smaller partitions to maximize tax revenue, while not being densified themselves.
I've literally watched city councils give themselves 15% raises, 17% raises, etc.. because of increases property tax revenue. At some point, the extra property tax just goes to an ever-bloating city management structure and they withhold as much as possible from the actual hard workers at the end of the stick (hospital staff, teachers, infrastructure crews, etc..)
https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/economy-law-politics/metro-vancouver-chiefs-pay-surges-past-500k-amid-tax-hikes-project-overruns-10858461
you should move to Scotch Creek first
No thanks. The LA model is a proven failure. I’d much rather live in a city like Montreal, a proven success.
Except he barely won despite his housing and economic platform.
This is exactly it. The NDP knows that their policy on this is hugely popular, regardless of what municipalities and the NIMBY groups that control them want people to think.
Now do it for social and supportive housing. Signed - An Outstanding City.
But that would be terrible for PoCo’s decades of community planning! Power grab! Something something common sense!!
As he should. This is pure political theatre from the mayors/council who don't want to own any of the pushback from wealthy detached homeowners who are the most likely to vote in municipal elections.
"has disrupted quiet residential neighbourhoods and led to persistent parking issues."
"and then you look at the construction and development industry right now, it’s all on pause.”
These things can't both co-exist you numbskulls. It can't both be unleashing a torrent of homebuilding that is causing strains on parking and disrupting neighbours *AND* causing construction/development to grind to a halt. If it's ground to a halt, why would there be any parking issues?
While I have no love for Ken Sim usually, I have to give him some credit that he isn't jumping into that clown car.
Does Rob Shaw check for Eby underneath the bed every night before sleep?
really does read like someone who has some unstated, unrelated beef with Eby and doesn't have enough editorial oversight for it to not come through in his work
For real. Such a hack.
I watched as housing become more and more unaffordable, while these municipalities drag their feets, young adults are being priced out of their cities. Now that a party came up with a solution (not a perfect one) and everyone under the sun cares about schools, hospitals and traffic being impacted. If you want suburban living, go live in a suburb, do not deny us our future.
Well without building the necessary schools. Housing. Road upgrades. transit. Sewage disposal etc etc. you still wont have a future. But minor details.
I think the mayors would be a lot less upset if the province demonstrates better preparation for higher density on their end.
A brand new high school in South Surrey had to stop admitting new students only a few years after opening because of overcapacity.
The province wants to 30X density in some areas but won't commit to building new schools until the existing ones are full?
How come there's still no new school in the Brentwood area?
schools are one of the few things I will generally concede the province has been dropping the ball on. The Ministry incompetently refuses to plan beyond current need
not just schools. Infrastructure like sewage treatment. Roads. Hospitals. Parks. Schools. But just keep cramming towers and more people in. It'll end well. Trust us. :/
Mike Hurley here in Burnaby has been all over his social media freaking out about how provincial zoning laws are causing everyone's property values to go up.
Yeah, you read that right.
He's fear-mongering over the higher property taxes due to those increased valuations. As if the increased taxes (which the municipality controls) are this giant threat to all these people who now own property worth millions and millions more.
You can't make this shit up.
Because the mayors are revolting
I don't think 15 mayors out of the 161 municipalities in the province constitutes a "revolt of the mayors".
Yeah I was just making a joke. Let's be honest, most of this is Brad whatever just getting sound bites for his eventual run for provincial leadership.
God help us.
But what percentage of the province live in those 15 municipalities? I don't support the "revolt" but something to consider.
The push back being from metro Vancouver mayors is even worse. When smaller communities throughout BC are essentially saying "ok, we got the memo, time to take serious strides to help address the ongoing affordability concerns by allowing some modest density" and the largest population center is kicking and screaming about very modest density requirements (especially on the global scale) it's tantamount to not wanting to address the most important issue stated by their residents for the past decade or more. The mayors seem to be more upset about their self perception as powerful individuals than actually doing good by their constituents. I hope the majority of them are without jobs come this time next year (after the municipal elections).
100%
they pretend to revolt
“Local community planning” is a part of why there’s a housing crisis.
This is like Covid-19, it’s an emergency and our provincial government needs to take a stand.
we won't just go back to nimby protectionism that only benefits the wealthy.
Good. Sustained housing growth is pushing down rents (-7% this year). These mayors would take us backwards.
I’d understand Belcarra, Anmore and Lions Bay. They are fairly in the wild and some don’t have municipal water, which is tricky when your residents are dependent on a creek during a climate crisis (solution is just decreasing the grants these places receive and using that money to build in better locations, they are free to take care of themselves), not to mention the risks regarding natural disasters. I am also against densification where wildlife is very active, but the rest doesn’t have any excuse.
None of these municipalities zoning bylaws limit the extent of development, except for how many units are allowed. You can build a 25,000 sqft home covered with invasive species and a permitter fence that destroys wildlife corridors, but try to put up a 4-plex with 3,500 sqft between all 4 units and somehow it's the end of the world. There are many ways to mitigate environmental impacts and build better water management strategies, but I'm not seeing much action on those front, as "unit density" is used as a proxy.
this is such a great point - people pretend that nimby building regulations do something they don't do. It's sort of like large lot regs, which just ensure that the habitat is broken up in acre-sized fences
Oh I agree. Their excuses are more about nimbyism than any of the concerns I mentioned. The difference between the two is though you are more likely to evacuate 1000 people than 4000 people in a wildfire where there is only one exit which could be closed due to fire anyway. But in your example 25000 sqft house is more "the end of the world" situation although I don’t believe it exists in this towns (not sure) since the land is quite limited and there is barely any empty land left in places like Lions Bay at this point.
The SSMUH zoning changes only apply to lots that have municipal water and sewer
more editorializing from Shaw
I’m shocked articles by that hack are still allowed here
Rob Shaw will always make the greatest possible effort to suck up to the most wrong-headed politicians in the province. It's pretty much a tradition at this point.
how many houses do these mayors own i wonder
just one, there's no conspiracy theory here if you're insinuating that.
just for the record, SSMUH will increase their detached lot price.
SSMUH doesn't really raise lot prices all that much
Yup, it does not increase by a lot since many lots become available so there's less unicorn lots.
honestly, these days you'll make more money with tech stocks than holding on to a $2M house with bad cashflow
i dont think its that they own houses, its that they like their six digit salaries and the power city hall has over developers in their muni. And because of how few people come out to vote its almost always the NIMBY single family home owners who are their core voting block.
Its a shame too that pro-density people never decided to pick one muni - any muni will do really - and win an election there to offer an alternative governance where rapid buildout of missing middle type homes could show it works.
Mayors complaining about housing laws while their cities have been completely unaffordable for years is pretty rich ngl
I'm curious as to others, but my small-ish BC town is building a lot right now. So many more apartments and condos popping up. Are others noticing the same in their town/city?
what are you comparing it against though?
To how it was before the law changes. Are they making an impact? Have others noticed new construction in their areas since Eby's law changes or has there been little change?
one of the things is that development tends to happen in highly visible locations for both policy and economic reasons. But the real measure would be how many actual units and how much floor space has been finished in your community per capita.
All this backlash: it shows the plan is working. City council are captured by older NIMBY single family home owners. Apartments are illegal in most parts of Metro Vancouver.
Try telling a family that they can't live in Metro Vancouver because they can't afford a $3m home and that you're blocking construction of a condo, "cause 'neighbourhood character.'"
Not to mention most apartment projects get pushed to busy arterials and highways where no one wants to live.
Preposterous. Keep making duplexes and apartments legal.
I hope Eby has the balls to actually pick this fight - these mayors sit around and do nothing because their core voter is the NIMBY single family home owner who wants price appreciation to keep happening. They are squeeling now because prices are going 10% every year and selling is a lot harder and the various city halls cant just reach into the developers pockets with even more fees.
It’s too bad that these mayors can’t just take the bull by the horns and lead. Why not create a duplex or triplex blueprint that’s cheap and makes everyone happy. Like a new Vancouver special, but multi unit. With parking. Then with the property taxes, you build more infrastructure? No? Is that not how this works?
Most people living in multi unit housing don’t even have cars. Or kids. They’re just trying to find housing they can afford that’s somewhat close to transit.
Municipalities have all their power delegated from the province. The municipalities only have power because the province lets them. The province delegates responsibilities to local municipalities, as they are better situated to respond to local needs and provide local services. They have consistently failed to do so regarding housing, and therefore the province has had to step in. Municipal housing policy has become extremely inequitable, with wealthy homeowners having far more power than people with housing insecurity.
The province has actually approached this very sensibly and diplomatically. The province provides major funding to every municipality in BC, which is heavily relied on. The province could have said “fix your housing policy or we withhold funding.” This would have required the muni politicians to eat the political fall out, but instead the province is willing to take the ill will.
Tbh I wouldn’t be mad if the province fired some of these councils and ran it themselves.
We’ve maintained the status quo on zoning my whole life and everything has become worse and worse. Something needs to change.
good
we need housing
I cannot figure out the complaints from municipalities about lack of provincial funding to go along with housing mandates. The province also gave municipalities the tools to raise their own revenues to offset the cost of infrastructure.
I am not saying "growth pays for growth" is perfect but if a mayor wants to go in that direction the tools exist already to handle that kind of model without further injections from the province.
Rushing housing isn't always good. You end up with overcrowded local infrastructure like schools and community centres. And Eby shouldn't be brushing off other levels of government. He only has control of the legislature by 1 paltry seat. He should be very humble and very interested in listening to others.
We do have an affordability crisis and action is needed. But it still needs to be action that is helping locals. There's a new 30 bedroom SFH monstrosity in my neighbourhood but it's tenants are 100% tourists. That building is actually hurting locals.
Good, they don't deserve a second thought. The ones who haven't focused on anything other than posturing and NIMBYism don't deserve the Province's attention.
Eby is starting to smell a little stale
I like Brad West and I get Mayors want more say over development than these new rules allow but I don't get his point. Dont we want houses to depress in value? or am i misreading what hes saying...
We don't have the infrastructure, especially on the north shore but more shoebox units that families can't live in is the solution.
Well then maybe you should build the infrastructure. There's nothing stopping you.
How he suppose to build more daycares, schools, more hospitals, more community centrals, more roads and more bridges? Are you dumb?
Vote for politicians who will raise the necessary taxes to do so, instead of keeping taxes unsustainably low and leaving the infrastructure to rot.
Well lemme fill you in... Raising property taxes to a high level only drives down property values which = lower tax revenue. Basically cancel each other out. So what's the solution?
On laughable note, no politician is going to have a platform of high taxes for all property owners. They won't get in so maybe back to the drawing board?
you can in fact raise property taxes on the kind of home ownership you want to discourage, inefficient single family homes with giant yards, and lower costs on the kind of home ownership you want, 5-6 story apartment blocks.
So we circle back to apartments that families can't live in, right back to where we started. If you think taxing everyone to death is the answer wait until rents go thru the roof. For every action is a reaction.
with taxes they collect from every building
it's your municipal problem to focus on shoebox units in the form of condos than pushing for more missing middle.
Yup. Builders would love to build family sized townhouses and multiplexes problem is the city made them illegal. Province finally had enough and pushed through SSMUH but many cities still heavily restrict family friendly infill housing.
Eby will lose the next election. Mark my words. He needs to go. This policy is stupid. Stay in your lane. He will not get my vote as he continues to shove things like this down our throats without any consultations.
It's pretty telling that Eby just barely scraped by an election win against a fractured and in-fighting political party who hadn't even held a seat since their revival as a party 20 years ago. He literally lost the NDP 10 seats, in a legislature that expanded by 6 seats on this election cycle. People weren't voting for the conservatives as much as they were voting against Eby.
That's a pretty glaring indication that he and his policies are not going over well with the people here.
The election results has almost nothing to do with him. A lot of people thought they were voting Trudeau out. Everyone was all mad about immigration back then. Now that the Feds have made changes, the next election will be different.
Yeah, no. That's just a thing Eby clingers say to cope.