Laneway Housing in the City of Vancouver: Let’s Make the Most of It
The City should be congratulated for considering the vast swaths of our single family neighborhoods with an eye to densification through building laneway housing. But as the City of Vancouver establishes its policy on laneway housing, it needs to think more broadly – in particular about what kind of housing the city really needs and how its development can be encouraged.
Take for instance the issue of family housing. Amongst other things, this is an important economic issue as parents of young families are critical members of our workforce - and we are losing them. Laneway housing represents an extraordinary opportunity and if implemented correctly could strengthen our economy and revolutionize the delivery of housing stock in the city.
The urgency for initiatives like laneway housing comes as our single family neighborhoods with their rich collections of family life amenities are becoming increasingly underutilized. Between 2004 to 2009, the Vancouver public school system shrank by over 2,100 pupils or 4 percent. This occurred despite an overall population growth of 6 percent in the city. The future is gloomy as over a third of all elementary schools lost more than 10 percent of their 2004 student populations which will eventually work its way up to the diminishing secondary school population. MacDonald Elementary near Victoria Drive lost nearly half of its student population! We need to find a way to repopulate these schools or risk abandoning millions of dollars of family supportive infrastructure.
Under the City’s current laneway housing proposal, most families would have great difficulty in living in a laneway house as it limits unit size to a maximum of 750 square feet for single family lots with 50 foot frontages and approximate 500 square feet for the vast majority of lots with 33 foot frontages. While the City’s proposal will provide a new source of rental housing for a targeted population of seniors, singles, and couples, the City’s substantial condominium industry already produces a ready stream of this type of housing units.
Based upon our recent condominium ownership study, the market has been very effective at producing a large number of small rental apartments. Essentially, investors have been buying small condos in droves and renting them out. We do not actually need more of this type of housing – what we do need are rental units with two or more bedrooms that can be occupied by young families so they can take advantage of infrastructure that already exists in our single family neighborhoods.
The City needs to find a way that they can encourage the market to produce this kind of housing and laneway housing could hold the key. In other words, rather than have a maximum size of 500 sf feet for a laneway house on a 33 foot lot, the City should be using all its resources and creativity (both inside and outside the Hall) to figure out how to put livable and affordable secondary family units on a 33 foot lot.
The fact that the City is now allowing laneway houses to be built on a test case basis is a very positive step – but unless more leeway can be given as to the size, form and parking requirements for this housing, the experiment will be of limited value. We need to broaden the discussion by allowing larger units that could be inhabited by young families with one or two children. This is an opportunity that should be studied beyond planning regulations and building design. It should also involve investigating and testing different building delivery methods, complementary financing and ownership models and potential incentives to encourage its construction.
With an aging population and declining birth rates, laneway housing could be part of the bulwark to Vancouver’s ability to retain these critical young workers. While our solid stock of smaller units works well at initially attracting these workers, unfortunately the lack of available family housing is forcing these workers to leave and find work elsewhere once they decide to start a family. The real tragedy about this is that this occurs often at the point in their careers where they are the most valuable to our economy, so their loss (often to locations outside the city or even the province) is detrimental to our future productivity and competitiveness.
Michael Heeney is a partner and the executive director for Bing Thom Architects.