VANCOUVER — The City of Vancouver is pointing to several improvements to permit wait times as development and permit applications skyrocket upward, with a 97.5 per cent increase in rezoning applications since 2010.
Key improvements highlighted at a Feb 12. Vancouver City Council meeting include approval of 900 affordable housing units with development permit approvals under the Social Housing or Rental Tenure (SHORT) program, along with reducing single family and laneway housing permits from 28 to 38 weeks to six weeks through the Applicant Supported and Assisted Process (ASAP) pilot.
Approximately 600 units of temporary modular housing were also developed by expediting development approval in four to nine weeks. The city also stated it is now reviewing 75 per cent of low-density housing permits in under 12 weeks and has decreased service centre wait times by a third on average in 2018.
“Speeding up the permitting process helps reduce costs and increase certainty for projects, especially for urgently needed affordable housing. By increasing staff, reducing red tape and moving more of our processes online we are better serving small- and-medium sized developers and homeowners, and I’m looking forward to seeing continued results as more improvements are put into place,” said Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart in a statement.
The city is also training over 230 staff in new development policies and procedures and hired 42 new staff in 2018 with 43 more planned for 2019 and prioritized towards housing, commercial and green infrastructure developments. Approximately $550 million will also be spent through a new City-Wide Utilities Development Cost Levy to fund sewer, water and green infrastructure expansion.
“We have seen great improvements over the past year and expect that the combination of extensive stakeholder engagement, strategic process and technology improvements, focused policy updates, and additional staff will have further impact in 2019.Through partnership and collaboration with developers, architects, business owners, and others that regularly apply for permits, we have designed solutions to meet their needs for increased transparency, consistency, and speed,” added City of Vancouver general manager of development, buildings and licensing Kaye Krishna.
“Going forward the city will continue to focus on our priority initiatives that have shown results and identify transformation and innovation opportunities that could deliver permitting more quickly. We’ve heard clearly that more needs to be done to deliver multi-family housing and better support arts, culture and community serving spaces, so we’ll be making that an additional focus as well,” stated City of Vancouver general manager of planning, urban design and sustainability Gil Kelley.
Around 7,742 development and building applications were received in 2018, along with 23,610 trade permit applications. Approximately 7,267 dwelling units received building permits.
Recent Comments
comments for this post are closed