"The only green visible will be the weeds growing in the cracks in the concrete"
More than 800 comments opposing the Villages Plan, and counting
TLDR: There's an important public hearing coming up tomorrow evening. Vancouver city council will decide on the Villages plan, which allows for six-storey buildings in a number of areas across the city. So far there’s more than 800 (!) comments submitted in opposition. If you'd like to help counterbalance the opposition (or if you think this is a terrible idea and you'd like to voice your opposition), it takes literally 60 seconds to submit a comment. It can be as simple as “I support this plan - we need more housing.” Just set the Subject to “Villages Planning Program.”
We have a chronic and terrible shortage of housing in Vancouver, resulting in low vacancy rates, high rents, and overcrowded, insecure housing. Over the last couple of years, asking rents have been slowly deflating, but they’re still too high.
Traditionally, the city of Vancouver has approved new housing through a very slow and difficult process: “It’s easier to elect a pope than to approve a small apartment building.” This results in massive economies of scale: it doesn’t make sense to go through this process for a small project. So you get high-rises (which are very slow to plan and build) and super-expensive low-density housing (which nobody can afford), with very little in beween. In Montreal you see a lot of “plexes,” three- and four-storey single-lot apartment buildings with a single family-sized flat per floor; you don’t see them here, because they’re illegal.
When you ask Vancouverites how the city should add more housing, the most popular option is adding more four- to six-storey buildings. You see a number of single-lot apartment buildings around the city, from before the city made them illegal.
The city has been working on allowing this, in a number of areas across the city, in what they call the “Villages Plan.” It’s intended to allow more shops, services, and housing in 17 neighbourhoods. In each case, there’s a limited high-street area with shops and services, and then low-density housing around it. The idea is to allow more housing with retail on the ground floor in the high-street area, and to allow apartment buildings up to six storeys within walking distance.
The Villages Plan is part of the city’s Housing Accelerator Fund commitments. And it’s the only item on the agenda for the July 14 public hearing.
What kind of opposition is it running into? A Kerrisdale resident writes:
I am totally opposed to the entire villages plan. It will speed the destruction of residential neighborhoods just as the densification madness does. You have transformed west side streets into one way alternating traffic on a permanent basis. The only green visible will be the weeds growing in the cracks in the concrete. I will actively work to defeat in October every council member of whatever party supports this ridiculous proposal and fire the planners as well.
Part of the reason that it’s difficult for Vancouver city council to make changes is that the public hearing process amplifies the voices of groups opposing new housing. It’s self-selected, and it’s the people most fearful of change (typically long-time residents who are insulated from the madness of the housing market) who are motivated to speak to council. So that’s who council tends to hear from.
More
“Villages” were part of the draft Vancouver Plan back in April 2022. “Low-density residential: allow townhouses and other forms of gentle density up to three storeys (‘Multiplex Area’), with more shops and services that you can walk to (‘Village’). The Village areas could include buildings up to six storeys.” More recently: draft Villages Plan, staff report for Villages Plan.
In Pictures: The Possibilities of Vancouver’s New Villages Plan. Bryn Davidson, Sightline. Bryn Davidson describes the potential for single-lot, single-stair buildings in Vancouver's Villages Plan. Includes lots of illustrations, based on a “Four/Five” design, with four storeys of flats in the front, and five in the back.
I supported the village plans
I wanted to support this plan. But there is one major issue that means I have had to oppose it.
More shopping and restaurants / coffee shops closer to each neighbourhood would be great and yes the city needs more housing but I can't support the rights and choices of current property owners being trampled on to achieve this.
Here is my comment to council and I will unfortunately be speaking in opposition to a plan that I wanted to support...
The worst part of the Villages zoning plan is what effectively amounts to expropriation of land (without paying for that expropriation) of approximately 750 properties on or near arterial streets.
If you are a property owner of one of these lots you will be banned from being able to renovate your home by adding an addition to your house, or from being able to build a new single family house or from adding a lane home to your property, you will also be banned from building a duplex or a MultiPlex which are all things that most properties in Vancouver are allowed to do right now.
Who's property is it? Property owners rights are being trampled on. Your choices eradicated.
If the city pushes this through for these 750 properties what will stop them from doing the same thing to another 5% of lots in the city a few months from now then another 5% a few months later, and so on, and so on until most property owners have no choice about what they are allowed to build on THEIR property.
In the case of our property, we had choices taken away from us when a city initiated rezoning was thrust upon us to RM-8A (townhouses). We didn't ask for it, it was done to help developers bypass the costly and time consuming rezoning process (and now townhouses are no longer a viable option in our area). We were told not to worry, that nothing would change for us, that we could do anything we would have been able to do if we weren't rezoned. NOT true. We would have been R1-1 and would have been able to do a MultiPlex. But we have been told we can't do that (to City planners - please fix this and add MultiPlex to RM-8A).
Pre zoning is not a gold mine for existing owners, not a get rich situation, it is control by the city to get what they or developers want.
If you own one of these properties you will become just a tax paying place holder for the eventual developer who will be your only choice to sell to, and only if you can manage to assemble with enough of your neighbours to make a parcel of land that would entice a developer to want to buy.
If the city wants to take away the rights of current property owners they should pay to expropriate these 750 lots.
While I think that 4-6 storey small scale (1-2 lot) apartment buildings like the older ones in kits and in the Cambie village area would be fine as a way to solve the housing crisis. I even like the idea of more ground floor retail to bring shopping and restaurants closer to each neighbourhood but it's the rights and choices being stripped away from current property owners in this plan that is atrocious.
If you bought the house as a single family property you should retain the ability to do anything you could at the time you bought it, as well as new choices. Not be suddenly told you only have one choice.
This Villages plan needs a major revamp including more consultation with existing owners and renters in the affected areas.