By Sean Condon
Stroll though the back alleys of Vancouver’s residential neighbourhoods and you’ll come across rows of small, colourful garages. While most are filled with cars, others sit empty or function simply as storage lockers. But thanks to Vancouver’s previous city council, these garages could play a part in helping solve the city’s rental crisis.
Last October, council voted unanimously to allow 100 homeowners to replace their garages with laneway housing. These cottage-styled homes will be available for rent (they cannot be sold) and should provide the city with additional affordable rental options.
“The more obvious advantage is the sustainability of it,” says Katherine Isaac, a Vancouver city planner. “Hopefully, instead of having to move out to Abbotsford or somewhere in the suburbs, where it’s more affordable, we’ll be providing housing right near jobs and transportation in the city.”
The city began looking at laneway housing a few years ago as a way to increase density and the affordable rental stock—which stagnated after the federal government cut tax exemptions in 1974 for developers to build rental buildings. According to the most recent Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation report, the average one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver is $936 a month, while the vacancy rate is a miniscule 0.3 per cent.
Laneway housing could help alleviate this pressure by allowing homeowners to move their parents or adult children into the house, thus taking low income renters off the market, and by creating a new source of rental units.
While the city will take its plan out for public consultation this spring to finalize details, staff are currently proposing that laneway homes be no larger than the size of the permitted garage. The city may end up allowing them to be as high as one-and-a-half storeys, but not any larger than two bedrooms.
“We don’t want to make it an attractive thing for developers to do,” says Isaac. “We’d rather keep it low-scale, homeowner driven… And the [two bedroom] unit cap would be instated to hopefully deter speculative development situations, which should keep building prices down and therefore keep rents down.”
Although homeowners will be allowed to convert their garages, the cost of ensuring it meets the city’s health and safety standards probably means it will be cheaper to tear it down and buy a new unit. The average laneway house is estimated to cost about $150,000.
Vancouver-based Smallworks builds small homes, backyard studios and laneway housing at about $250 per square foot. Co-owner Jake Fry says the biggest advantage for laneway housing will be the benefits it provides seniors.
“Rather than the government investing in big infrastructure projects [for seniors], that tend to be fairly inhumane housing, you’re going to have an opportunity where you’re going to allow seniors to open up their own place to be rented or have families create assisted living on their own property,” he says.
Fry adds that laneway housing also has positive environmental aspects. Because they’re so small, Smallworks can build the homes in its warehouse, which reduces construction waste and carbon emissions. And creating denser neighbourhoods means people will be more likely to walk, bike or take transit instead of using their car.
But while laneway housing could have both social and environmental benefits, not everyone is sold on the idea. Jonathan Baker, a member of the Dunbar Residents’ Association and a former city councillor, told TheThunderbird.ca last year that laneway housing would mean shadowy backyards and parking shortages.
In 2006, Toronto rejected the concept because it would make alleyways too narrow for garbage and fire trucks. However, Gordon Price, director of SFU’s City Program and a former city councillor, says laneway housing will work in Vancouver because the alleyways are much wider here than in Toronto.
“I’ve always argued that one of the great advantages of nineteenth century subdivision patterns are these alley ways,” he says. “They go back to the 1880s [when they were made] for the horse and stables. The particular advantage of them from a city growth point of view is that it allowed us to put the underground parking entrances off the lanes… and now this opportunity to build laneway housing.”
But Price says all of Metro Vancouver will need to approve laneway housing if it’s going to have any impact on the city’s rental costs. While North Vancouver is expected to permit laneway housing sometime this year, it’s only allowed in pockets of Surrey and Burnaby.
The first laneway homes are expected to go up in Vancouver this fall. After 100 houses or three years (whichever comes first), the city will reevaluate the program.
For more information about laneway housing, visit Vancouver Ecodensity.ca and Smallworks.ca.
