As cities increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs of critics who say they are responsible for housing shortages, they are struggling to find ways to fix one of the major issues – delays with building permits.
But, as the experience of major B.C. cities shows, that’s not easy.
Vancouver has been working for a year to reduce its wait times for permits. But data show that, although it is processing more applications than it was a year ago, the volume of permits being requested has spiked and so waiting times are as long as ever – or longer.
A recent e-mail from Mayor Kennedy Stewart’s chief of staff, Neil Monckton, to local builders touted the city’s “increased throughput” of between 22 and 45 per cent on different types of applications for housing construction. That was a follow-up to a staff report that provided a one-year update on progress.
However, one builder in town look a close look at Vancouver’s open data on permitting times and found that the time for approval of a permit for a single-family house took 143 days in May, 2021, but that time steadily rose in the next year until the average was 233 days by May, 2022.
“In one project, it took five months just to get to a plan checker,” said general contractor Avi Barzelai, who has kicked off a vocal one-person crusade recently to highlight the problem. “It’s gotten progressively worse over time.”
City staff say Mr. Barzelai’s numbers aren’t wrong, but that there are complicating factors – a big backlog of stalled applications, a spike in new ones, huge problems with staff recruitment and turnover – that have limited progress on the problem.
“We anticipated some increase but not to the degree we saw,” said Andrea Law, Vancouver’s general manager of development, buildings and licensing, about the rate of new applications.
Vancouver – where the mayor got a motion approved to have staff look at the possibility of guaranteed permit times – is not the only city struggling with the issue as provincial and federal politicians have attempted to pin some blame for Canada’s housing-affordability crisis on city governments that are not only slow at issuing permits, but also prone to charging massive developer fees.
The issue crosses political lines, with people as different as Pierre Poilievre, a candidate to become leader of the national Conservative Party, and B.C.’s NDP Attorney-General David Eby calling on cities to stop blocking needed housing.
The B.C. government initiated a Development Approvals Process Review in 2018. That group’s 2019 report had a list of recommendations and, since then, the province has been working with local governments to get some of the suggestions adopted. That’s had variable success as cities try to efficiently balance the increasing number of new policies and requirements that have been imposed on housing in recent decades – everything from energy efficiency to accessibility to tree protection.
Delta, B.C., announced a permit-streamlining initiative last fall as part of that.
Council in Maple Ridge, B.C., received a scathing report last fall from an outside consulting firm about its permitting processes, which noted that not only were permitting times too slow but that the attitudes of some staff were a notable problem.
“Concerns highlighted specific behaviours and actions that can only be characterized as unprofessional, uncivil, disrespectful and belittling to others, hostile and threatening,” said the report from Neilson Strategies Inc.
Since then, three employees of the department are said to have resigned and there has been no sign of any improvements, according to Councillor Gordy Robson.
Mayor Mike Morden did not respond to requests for any additional information about progress.
Surrey council also passed a requirement for guaranteed permitting times last fall, ranging from 10 weeks maximum for a single-family house to 16 weeks for a multifamily development. Recent data put out by the city claimed its building department is meeting those timelines in most categories.
Ron Rapp, the chief executive of the Homebuilders Association Vancouver (HAVAN), said people in the industry are still frustrated by the long waits in Surrey, B.C., and have taken to calling anything processed quickly as “unicorn permits” – referring to a rare, almost mythological, event.
Both he and Ms. Law acknowledge that a lot of frustration, along with arguments about how long permits really take, come from disputes over when the clock should start ticking.
Cities generally won’t designate a permit as “started” until every part of the application is done correctly, even if it has taken up to a year to get to that point. Staff also frequently mention that permit times can seem uncommonly long in some cases because inexperienced homeowners or small-bore builders don’t do a good job of making sure they’ve completed their applications correctly.
Mr. Barzelai acknowledged that can be an issue and he even suggested that the city prohibit amateurs from submitting applications. He also said he appreciated a motion from Mr. Stewart to have staff explore the idea of guaranteed permitting times, as Surrey has done.
Ms. Law said her department is definitely looking into that, but notes that Surrey is struggling to come to an agreement with the industry and its staff about what constitutes a complete application and a starting point.
It’s a conversation that other municipalities are likely to join sooner or later because none of them has got the answer yet, she said.
“I can’t say I’ve spoken to any municipality that think they’re doing really great.”
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Frances Bula