People exit the Broadway-City Hall SkyTrain station in Vancouver in March. Developers, architects, former city staff and other practitioners have criticized the Broadway plan as rushed.Isabella Falsetti/The Globe and Mail
The mass prezoning of areas throughout the Broadway and Cambie corridors – Vancouver’s effort to fast-track redevelopment – went to a public hearing last week and triggered another letter from a group of housing practitioners to the government.
What the city calls its Broadway Plan had already attracted controversy, but midsummer, city staff and council doubled down with the release of a 447-page technical report that would expedite development through prezoning. Landowners would no longer have to go through a rezoning application on an individual site, and they’d skip the need for a public hearing or feedback.
Developers, architects, former city staff and other practitioners have criticized the move as rushed and failing to consider the transformative impacts of the new zoning, which standardizes low-rise, mid-rise and high-rise housing throughout areas of Broadway and the Cambie Corridor. The prezoned 4,294 parcels, in areas near transit, would bypass public consultation and go straight to the development permit stage.
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The public hearing was held on Sept. 16, but not every speaker had the chance to speak. On Oct. 7, city council will debate the matter further, and a decision is expected.
“They’re taking the public out of the process,” said planning consultant, Robert Renger, former senior development planner for the city of Burnaby. “The property taxes are most certainly going to go up, and there’s going to be less transparency all around.”
Mr. Renger said the city’s report also makes it clear that they are “knowingly targeting the existing older apartment buildings,” by including an analysis of the financial viability of redeveloping those buildings for higher densities. His other concern is that residents will receive fewer amenities despite density increases. A rezoning application normally gives the city the chance to negotiate public benefits, such as community centres. And although it’s not suggested in the new report, Mr. Renger is also concerned that the 20 per cent below-market rental housing requirement will eventually get reduced, in response to developer pressure. He noted that city staff had mentioned “inclusionary housing,” or below-market housing, as one impact on development viability in a presentation to the Urban Development Institute in August.
“You might very well see those things watered down,” said Mr. Renger, who is one of the 28 names on a letter sent to the city, alongside former city chief planner Larry Beasley, UBC professor emeritus Patrick Condon, former city of Vancouver urban designer Frank Ducote and other former city staffers, professors and architects.
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Neil Hrushowy, the city’s director of community planning, said if approved, most projects in the three new zone areas (called R3, R4, R5) would require some below-market rentals, or social housing, or market-rate rental units. The requirements, he said, would vary, depending on the type of project and location. The existing rental apartments in R5, he said, would require a high-rise building proposal to be entirely rental with 20 per cent of the floor space for below-market rental. Requirements to provide nonmarket housing are a way to offset “potential speculation and land lift,” he said.
“City-initiated rezoning of areas of Broadway and Cambie Corridor seek to encourage the delivery of more affordable housing units while providing pathways to the renewal of existing rental stock,” said Mr. Hrushowy.
On Oct. 7, city council will debate the matter further, and a decision is expected.Isabella Falsetti/The Globe and Mail
Private sector project manager Elizabeth Murphy also signed the letter to Mayor Ken Sim and city councillors, dated Sept. 12. It is one of four letters the group has written on affordability concerns to the federal, provincial or city governments. The letter says the current market correction should be looked at as an opportunity to produce the affordable housing that is needed and asks that the city not use taxpayer money and upzoning to “bail out over-leveraged speculative development.” It also asks that the city not provide what it calls the equivalent of subsidies by waiving development fees or giving out density bonuses through rezonings without public benefits in return. There should be minimum unit sizes, and prices should be in relation to local incomes, not market median prices, it says.
Ms. Murphy said the new zoning will likely be applied in other areas of the city, with scant public consultation.
“It’s quite remarkable how this is being pushed through, that the public was not consulted at all, not before the referral report came out in the middle of summer. And then the public hearing came to council right after the Labour Day weekend, basically. So really, no time for people to prepare or whatever.”
One of the motivations for the zoning change is the province’s Bill 47, which mandated minimum heights and densities around transit-oriented areas.
“My main problem with both the provincial legislation and this local response to it is that all of this is motivated by a false premise, that adding an abundance of housing towers will lower costs, and that neighbourhood resistance is the reason why housing costs too much,” said University of B.C. professor emeritus and author Patrick Condon. “That is not the reason why housing costs too much. The reason why housing costs too much is because urban land costs too much. And this plan makes land price inflation and land speculation worse, and thus will fail to make housing more affordable.
“The bottom line is this: This latest zoning policy change allows tower developments to go next to your two- or four-storey home without a public hearing. Neighbourhood owners and renters will not get a chance to do anything or say anything about it.”
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As for how it will impact renters, the Broadway Plan area alone contains 25 per cent of the city’s rental stock, much of it deemed affordable because the buildings are decades old. Renters are more vulnerable to land use decisions because they generally have lower incomes than homeowners.
Recent Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data show that the median total household income for renters, before taxes, is significantly less than that of homeowners, at $75,600 in Metro Vancouver. By comparison, homeowner household income is $126,000.
Filmmaker David Fine, who is making a documentary about planning in Vancouver, said that the city is attempting to fast-track development despite the fact that demand has eased off.
“We’re getting a lot more rentals because of policy changes, because of immigration [policy], because of student visas and the economy. So, you know, it kind of undermines this whole notion that the city needs to be turbocharging this supply thing to make it even easier to build, as if this is going to solve our affordability and housing crisis,” said Mr. Fine.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify that any high-rise proposals in the R5 zone area must be all rental with 20 per cent of the floor space devoted to below-market rental.