Vancouver Approves Laneway Housing
This is great news! I am a big supporter of laneway housing concepts having seen what some have been able to achieve for affordable living in small footprints. The biggest obstacle has always been city permits and getting those in power to see the solution. On the downside, these properties will only be permitted to be rented out. Full details have not been released and I am sure they come with quite a few caveats such as size restrictions (please don’t limit to some tiny studio under 500 sq.ft. We need more 3 bedroom places for families). All the same, it is a step in the right direction and will only be going forward on a neighbourhood by neighbourhood approval process.
From the CBC: Vancouver opens door to laneway housing
The city of Vancouver is moving ahead with a plan to allow 100 homeowners to convert their back-alley garages into laneway housing.
The plan, approved Thursday night with the unanimous support of civic council, is one of the key parts of the municipality’s controversial eco-density charter adopted in June to increase the number of people living in the city in an environmentally sustainable manner.
Many people can see how having a living space in their garage will work in a city with little affordable rental space, Coun. Suzanne Anton said.
“Our kids are starting to leave the house. We could put ourselves in a little cottage, put our kids and grandkids one day in the house,” she said.
“Elderly people might be able to put help in the little laneway house, letting them stay at home for many more years, if they have help.”
The average cost of a conversion is expected to be around $150,000, but owners will only be able to rent and not sell the laneway homes.
Before any of the alley homes go ahead, there will be public hearings on a neighbourhood by neighbourhood basis, and only homes already zoned single-family will qualify for the pilot project.
That means the first laneway house won’t be built for about a year, Anton said.
Gordon Price, a former Vancouver councillor and the director of the City Program, an urban-issues centre at Simon Fraser University, said the plan can work because Vancouver is rare among North American cities as it was laid out with back lanes by planners more than 100 years ago.
“They are really a product of late 19th-century urban planning, if you can call it that. It was the way that they laid out our block pattern, because they had to provide provision for the horses and carriages to come in to stables at the back,” Price said Friday.
Vancouver, BC 
Hi Will, what are your thoughts on row housing (non-strata)? Very common back east and in places like San Francisco. This type of development hit a political brick wall for the past 20 years and I heard rumblings about it being back on the table. Personally my family would be very interested in a non-strata row house concept. I think PoCo or Coquitlam allows such row housing but I don’t know about other LM cities.
One of my good friends bought a non-strata townhome in Barrie several years ago so I know a bit how they work. I also know that that is the norm in the UK. My family would be thrilled to be able to afford a townhome in Van West and if it were non-strata then I would be, too. Not sure about the re-zoning needs but that is the kind of development I think we are likely to see in the next 15 years (wish it were sooner). They’d be placed on busier streets at first and you could easily take two 50′ lots, put them together, and get 12 affordable row homes (6 front, 6 back). Each would be 16′ wide and 30′ deep. With that design, over three floors, you could get a livable area on three floors of about 1300 sq.ft. each which could accommodate at least three bedrooms and a decent living/dining room, and put a rooftop garden/patio to boot.
This is absolutely what Vancouver families need. And sold at 400k a piece they would be extreely profitable for the developer.
Big question may be parking… put it underground and limit it to one per unit. When you live next to everything you really do not need more than one car per family unit, do you? Even better, have the city lease out below ground space for corporations o build community parking centres limited to the residents and guests, and have these private secure parking garages built under the alleyways. Then green over the alleys so that communities have garden spaces between their homes. The city gains extra revenue. The residents have a choice to pay for as much parking as they need/want or forego it all together, and a smart corporation (please not Impark, please, please, please not them) has a golden business opportunity. And before anyone says “I don’t want to pay for parking”, if you bought a condo with a parking space then you already did as the cost is about $30,000 more than a unit that doesn’t have a space. Financed that works out to about $200/month. Yikes!
The real key for me is the non-strata part. Covenants are fine but having the uncertainty of a strata, with all the potential for corruption and mismanagement, normally makes townhomes and condos trade at a discount IMO. I had high hopes for the new city planner but re-zoning and changing of bylaws is a difficult and politically charged process.
Parking I agree is a sticking point. Make the lots a bit wider and it would be the same as San Francisco, with a narrow garage and a narrow, possibly shared, front entrance. See pics at raisethehammer.org for concepts. One can see the ones in San Fran have garages and are to earthquake code to boot.
Your idea is a great concept to try and it’s a travesty the local council isn’t willing to take more innovative risks to try to find a better solution than what we have now. Multiplex strata dwellings are not the answer.
The one caution I would add, and this is what kills individual garages, is the forcing of narrow and tall homes. With a garage taking up much of the street level you are left with an entrance and stairs up. To get the maximum livable space (for many families that max would be a minimum requirement) you’d likely be forcing greater than three floors and that is really too many stairs to climb. Especially for families with small children or anyone with trouble climbing stairs.
That link you provided show some excellent examples of well done row homes. I really see no problem with turning lanes into addressable lanes and subdividing lots to make space for laneway rowhomes. Of course you’d need to get that through the residents and city hall but I would imagine quite a few inheriting owners and developers salivating at the though of converting some of the less desirable busy streets in brand name neighbourhoods into this (and cash, naturally). Think of the homes along 12th Ave, 16th Ave, 10th Ave. A detached run down home going for somewhere in the 800’s (tear down) suddenly subdividable into two lots and two homes.
There’s a rule in real estate investing: The more people you can put in there the more valuable it will be.
San Francisco, London, Brooklyn. This is a model for we, as a city with limited land resources but a strong demand for even just a bit of land from potential home owners. Strata, condos… not for everyone. In fact, a turnoff for many who will continue to rent or leave the city for greener grass (pun intended).