Hey Russil, thanks for the article about this. I'm most curious about the phrasing in the official press release: "This legislation, if passed, will build on work underway to facilitate more transit-oriented development, create more livable communities and tackle the housing crisis."
In your view, is there a chance that the legislation won't be passed? Or that it may be watered down? I'm not familiar with provincial politics.
I think the possibility that the legislation won't be passed is vanishingly small, since the BC NDP have a majority. Of course nothing is certain in politics (which is presumably why the press release is written that way), but I have a hard time imagining a scenario where the BC NDP introduce a major change like this, and then subsequently decide to withdraw it.
Also wondering whether you have some thoughts on the 100k unit in 10 years projections. Just eyeballing it, it feel like the plan could support A LOT more as is. Is the projections too conservative? Maybe they assume the development charge will be high which deter developer?
Good question. I'm afraid I don't know anything about the model used to produce the 10-year estimate.
I think of it like this. There's three bottlenecks: the approval bottleneck (what's legal to build vs. what requires a long and painful rezoning), the cost bottleneck (what can be built that's worth more than the cost of building it), and physical construction. The policy change opens up the approval bottleneck - it'll be legal to build multifamily housing in a lot more places. If we assume the cost bottleneck remains more or less the same, how do we estimate the impact of the approval change?
Maybe something like this: there's developers who plan multifamily projects, assemble capital and land, get approval, build the housing, and move on to the next project. If we assume the same number of developers, but that the approval step is much faster, then each developer would be able to build housing at a somewhat faster rate. If the approval step currently takes 20% of the total time, and this is reduced to 5%, then over 10 years we'd expect to see about 20% more housing built. (1 / 0.85 is about 1.2X.)
Ideally this would also reduce barriers to entry, so that smaller builders would be able to enter the market, as in Montreal: https://morehousing.ca/montreal
Love the minimum requirement for FAR and story. Here is hoping the province will do similar thing for the multiplex plan. Honestly FAR of 1.5 and 3 stories should be the minimum standard for across the province given the urgent need for more housing.
I am curious about your thoughts on the FAR's that were chosen, as they seem like the bottleneck when it comes to the amount of units that will result from this policy (as opposed to the heights).
Also curious if you think Rapid Busses should have been included or if that's going too far, potentially giving NIMBY's a reason to oppose new rapid bus lines and easily removable bus lines that already exist.
All that said, I am very ecstatic that the provincial government is taking steps to combat the housing crisis, and am starting to feel optimistic!
Good question about the FAR limits. As a layperson I usually think of them in terms of site coverage (FSR / height): a 20-storey building with 5.0 FSR corresponds to 25% site coverage, a 12-storey building with 4.0 FSR means 33% site coverage, an eight-storey building with 3.0 FSR means 37.5% site coverage.
I wouldn't be surprised if RapidBus stops get added at some point.
I agree that it's great to see the provincial government taking a bold swing at the problem! Next question is what kind of pushback they get, and what kind of stance the opposition (BC United) takes.
Hey Russil, thanks for the article about this. I'm most curious about the phrasing in the official press release: "This legislation, if passed, will build on work underway to facilitate more transit-oriented development, create more livable communities and tackle the housing crisis."
In your view, is there a chance that the legislation won't be passed? Or that it may be watered down? I'm not familiar with provincial politics.
I think the possibility that the legislation won't be passed is vanishingly small, since the BC NDP have a majority. Of course nothing is certain in politics (which is presumably why the press release is written that way), but I have a hard time imagining a scenario where the BC NDP introduce a major change like this, and then subsequently decide to withdraw it.
Also wondering whether you have some thoughts on the 100k unit in 10 years projections. Just eyeballing it, it feel like the plan could support A LOT more as is. Is the projections too conservative? Maybe they assume the development charge will be high which deter developer?
Good question. I'm afraid I don't know anything about the model used to produce the 10-year estimate.
I think of it like this. There's three bottlenecks: the approval bottleneck (what's legal to build vs. what requires a long and painful rezoning), the cost bottleneck (what can be built that's worth more than the cost of building it), and physical construction. The policy change opens up the approval bottleneck - it'll be legal to build multifamily housing in a lot more places. If we assume the cost bottleneck remains more or less the same, how do we estimate the impact of the approval change?
Maybe something like this: there's developers who plan multifamily projects, assemble capital and land, get approval, build the housing, and move on to the next project. If we assume the same number of developers, but that the approval step is much faster, then each developer would be able to build housing at a somewhat faster rate. If the approval step currently takes 20% of the total time, and this is reduced to 5%, then over 10 years we'd expect to see about 20% more housing built. (1 / 0.85 is about 1.2X.)
Ideally this would also reduce barriers to entry, so that smaller builders would be able to enter the market, as in Montreal: https://morehousing.ca/montreal
Love the minimum requirement for FAR and story. Here is hoping the province will do similar thing for the multiplex plan. Honestly FAR of 1.5 and 3 stories should be the minimum standard for across the province given the urgent need for more housing.
I am curious about your thoughts on the FAR's that were chosen, as they seem like the bottleneck when it comes to the amount of units that will result from this policy (as opposed to the heights).
Also curious if you think Rapid Busses should have been included or if that's going too far, potentially giving NIMBY's a reason to oppose new rapid bus lines and easily removable bus lines that already exist.
All that said, I am very ecstatic that the provincial government is taking steps to combat the housing crisis, and am starting to feel optimistic!
Good question about the FAR limits. As a layperson I usually think of them in terms of site coverage (FSR / height): a 20-storey building with 5.0 FSR corresponds to 25% site coverage, a 12-storey building with 4.0 FSR means 33% site coverage, an eight-storey building with 3.0 FSR means 37.5% site coverage.
I wouldn't be surprised if RapidBus stops get added at some point.
I agree that it's great to see the provincial government taking a bold swing at the problem! Next question is what kind of pushback they get, and what kind of stance the opposition (BC United) takes.