Should tiny houses become part of the residential landscape in Delta’s single-family neighbourdoods?
It’s one of the ideas that was brought forward to council in a presentation earlier this summer by the advocacy group Small Housing BC, which proposed “gentle housing solutions” such as tiny homes, laneway/coach homes, small lot homes, rowhouses and pocket neighbourhoods.
“It’s also a housing that British Columbians agree, and feel is an important opportunity and program that will increase affordable and attainable housing. And, we’ve seen this in our studies and, in fact, one-in- five homeowners of single-detached lots are actually looking to pursue this type of initiative on their own,” said Jake Fry, founder and board member of Small Housing BC, at the June 20th presentation.
Noting their proposals closely align with the B.C. government’s housing agenda, Fry said homeowners, however, are reluctant to develop due to uncertainty surrounding financing and limited clarity when it comes to process and regulations.
Tamara White, associate executive director, spoke to the benefit of streamlining policies and regulations to expedite new home construction.
Small Housing BC recommends enabling the strata-title conversion of laneway homes and coach housing, saying it would permit approximately 10,000 existing units to be made available as an entry-level home.
The organization also recommends a gentle density housing framework for action that draws on best practices to enable more housing in single-family neighbourhoods.
The organization also recommends supporting what’s known as the Permanently Attainable Home Ownership (PAtH) model, saying it can deepen housing attainability for middle-income earners in major urban centres. PAtH would enable homeowners to replace a single-family home with up to six units. Council members pointed out a small house solution had been achieved seven years ago by North Delta resident Kathleen Higgins, a longtime advocate of small housing, who got four smaller detached houses for family members on what was once one single-family lot on 108th Street.
According to city planning staff at the time, given the uniqueness of that project, it involved a site-specific amendment to the Official Community Plan (OCP) and rezoning to a comprehensive development zone.
In 2020, James and Margaret Higgins made a presentation to council on the hurdles and length of time it took get the project approved.
One solution they proposed is having pre-zoning in place for such projects, designating all single-family lots as infill. Having city-wide pre-zoning was one of the recommendations in Delta’s subsequent Housing Action Plan.
Earlier this year, council approved amendments to the OCP to pave the way for more so-called “gentle density” to be added to neighbourhoods.
The recommendations were part of the Housing Action Plan, approved in 2021, and include removing a units per hectare density measure from Delta’s multi-unit and mixed-use land use designations, where floor space ratio density maximums already exist.
The changes also included updating the East Ladner and Ladner Area Plans to remove the minimum lot size requirements for infill single-detached subdivisions and removing policies requiring design covenants to be registered for all infill single-detached residential subdivisions in Ladner.
The move is to help pave the for more units such duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, coach homes, detached suites and townhouses in historically single-detached neighbourhoods.
Council this year also agreed to make changes to the zoning bylaw on secondary suites. The changes include removal of the minimum and maximum floor area requirements for suites to allow greater flexibility in design to accommodate a wider range of rental types.
At an announcement this summer, BC Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon named the first 10 municipalities that will have housing targets, including the City Delta.
The province said the Housing Supply Act gives it the authority to set targets for municipalities, starting with those with the greatest need and highest projected growth.
