{"id":944,"date":"2017-03-07T22:49:12","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T22:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/?p=944"},"modified":"2017-03-07T22:49:29","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T22:49:29","slug":"finance-minister-wants-reasonable-deadline-for-municipal-housing-approvals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/finance-minister-wants-reasonable-deadline-for-municipal-housing-approvals\/","title":{"rendered":"Finance minister wants ‘reasonable’ deadline for municipal housing approvals"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

B.C. Finance Minister Mike de Jong is offering municipalities incentives if they can approve housing projects within an 18-month deadline.<\/p><\/div>\n

Rob Shaw
\nVancouver Sun<\/p>\n

VICTORIA \u2014 B.C.\u2019s finance minister\u00a0says he\u2019s going to offer a cash incentive on one hand, and maybe apply a little Drano with\u00a0the other, to unclog the housing development pipeline in\u00a0Metro Vancouver\u2019s municipalities.<\/p>\n

Mike de Jong unveiled\u00a0details in an interview about\u00a0his plan to offer cash\u00a0to Lower Mainland municipalities in exchange for \u201creasonable\u201d deadlines on permitting, rezoning and approval processes.<\/p>\n

The hope, he said, is to get shovels in the ground on tens of thousands of new townhomes, apartments and condos that have spent years languishing in local planning departments during the\u00a0region\u2019s housing affordability crisis.<\/p>\n

Finding a way to get them on the market could address the region\u2019s supply shortage and maybe even drive down prices.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I said in the\u00a0budget, purposefully, and in a more formal way than what I\u2019ve been saying behind-the-scenes to municipalities, is we are prepared to sit down with you and pour a little Drano\u00a0on this and unclog what seems to be a clogged approval process,\u201d said de Jong.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Finance ministry research\u00a0has shown some relatively straightforward applications to build\u00a0up to 60 units of housing\u00a0have\u00a0languished for as long as seven years in front of certain councils, said de Jong, which he labelled \u201can inappropriate and unacceptable state of affairs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt strikes me that anything over 18 months is unreasonable,\u201d he said. \u201cSo the conversation is: We\u2019re prepared to provide some resources,\u00a0but when these applications go forward we expect to see decisions within 18 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, sometimes the decision is no \u2026 but let\u2019s get a decision and move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The money will be mainly earmarked for new planning department staff, and\u00a0won\u2019t flow until after\u00a0the May 9 election.<\/p>\n

The incentives are another plank in the housing platform the B.C. Liberal government is building for its\u00a0upcoming election campaign.<\/p>\n

The party believes it can withstand voter criticism on the demand side of the housing crisis, having introduced the popular\u00a0foreign buyer tax last year to cool the high end of the market, and a down payment loan program geared to young families hoping\u00a0to buy their first home.<\/p>\n

Where the government has had less success is in clearing the municipal backlog.<\/p>\n

Though the Liberals have long blamed Metro municipalities for delaying construction of housing during an affordability crisis, they\u2019ve stopped short of forcing a solution, fearing that legislating deadlines would prompt an all-out war with mayors before\u00a0the election.<\/p>\n

Instead, last month\u2019s budget offered\u00a0\u201cperformance-based\u201d help to municipalities like\u00a0Richmond, Surrey, Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster and Coquitlam, which\u00a0collectively have 115,000 units of housing tied up in planning.<\/p>\n

How much money is exactly on the table, de Jong won\u2019t say. But \u201cwe can accommodate this within the fiscal plan\u201d and \u201cwe\u2019re not talking billions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some municipalities will take the deal. Others will likely bristle at the deadlines, arguing that larger developments require more public consultation, and some projects\u00a0involve complicating factors\u00a0like heritage designations.<\/p>\n

The City of Vancouver \u2014 which Housing Minister Rich Coleman took a swipe at for delays last week<\/a> \u2014 believes it has enough planners. Mayor Gregor Robertson told developers\u00a0last week<\/a>\u00a0that his own in-house planning\u00a0reforms are coming within\u00a0weeks.<\/p>\n

Surrey \u2014 which processed the second-most building permits in its history in 2016 \u2014 already has 220 staff in its planning department.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0better\u00a0solution would be to fast-track developers<\/a> with proven records, argues the Greater Vancouver Homebuilders\u2019 Association.\u00a0De Jong expressed support for that idea as well.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0government could also change the law to forbid single-family zoning in certain parts of Metro Vancouver, which is holding up higher density and the\u00a0development of more housing projects,\u00a0said University of B.C. professor Tom Davidoff.<\/p>\n

Local councils would secretly love the idea, said Davidoff, because the provincial government would then take\u00a0the heat for allowing\u00a0townhomes and apartments into single family neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hear it from some municipal officials,\u00a0who talk about the pressure,\u201d said de Jong. \u201cBut I haven\u2019t met one who wants to surrender their land use planning authority. It is uncomfortable at times. That\u2019s the price you pay for taking on these representative roles.\u201d<\/p>\n

There remain\u00a0hints that the government\u2019s new incentive program is the proverbial carrot before the stick, should the Liberals win a fifth term in office.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, some provinces have legislated timelines,\u201d de Jong mused\u00a0in the\u00a0interview, quickly adding he prefers trying\u00a0co-operation first.<\/p>\n

The government\u00a0has a far more aggressive approach to housing along transit lines, where de Jong said billions in provincial funds \u201cwill be conditional\u201d on high density zoning along Vancouver\u2019s proposed Broadway subway line and Surrey\u2019s\u00a0light rapid transit\u00a0project.<\/p>\n

The Liberals hope the\u00a0flurry of activity on housing in the past year will erase any memories of the initial months spent arguing vigorously about how improper it would be to intervene\u00a0in the real estate market.<\/p>\n

The NDP has\u00a0drawn the election battle line by framing all the reforms as too little, too late,\u00a0for an affordability crisis\u00a0caused by Liberal inaction.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir argument that there\u2019s this huge backlog and there\u2019s this systemic issue is undermined by the fact they\u2019ve been in power for 16 years and didn\u2019t address it,\u201d said\u00a0NDP housing critic David Eby.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem with the argument the finance minister is making, is nobody believes it.\u201d<\/p>\n

rshaw@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Read more:\u00a0http:\/\/vancouversun.com\/news\/politics\/rob-shaw-finance-minister-wants-reasonable-deadline-for-municipal-housing-approvals<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

B.C.\u2019s finance minister says he\u2019s going to offer a cash incentive on one hand, and maybe apply a little Drano with the other, to unclog the housing development pipeline in Metro Vancouver\u2019s municipalities. Mike de Jong unveiled details in an interview about his plan to offer cash to Lower Mainland municipalities in exchange for \u201creasonable\u201d deadlines on permitting, rezoning and approval processes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,8],"tags":[381,311,314],"class_list":["post-944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-city-planning","category-development","tag-affordability","tag-development","tag-new-homes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":947,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions\/947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrisbrownrealestate.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}