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Green Granny Flats could solve middle-income housing crisis Speaking at a recent conference on the future of Vancouver, former director of planning Larry Beasley pinpointed the lack of affordable workforce housing as the biggest challenge facing our city. A two-income middle class working couple can no longer afford to buy a home in the City of Vancouver or in many of the other Metro Vancouver municipalities. Our high housing costs are compounded by a low-value economy: household incomes in Metro Vancouver rank 22nd out of 27 Canadian metropolitan areas.
There is a remarkably simple solution to this middle-income housing crisis: Green Granny Flats. If every Metro Vancouver single-family 33-foot lot homeowner were allowed to build a 540-square-foot laneway cottage – the size of a double-car garage – in the back yard, we could add thousands of affordable housing units. Seniors could age in place, either by renting out their main house and moving into their own small suite or by moving into a flat in their family’s back yard. Families with young adults could let a child “move out” into the backyard and keep rents in the family – or bring in rental income. First-time homebuyers could get into the real estate market by jointly buying one lot with two homes. There would be no need for large-scale developments with a huge investment in new streets and sewers. No government funds would be required. The character of the city’s cherished single-family neighbourhoods would be protected, since these garage-height roofs wouldn’t shade anyone’s garden or intrude on any neighbour’s privacy. Neighbourhood safety would be enhanced with extra eyes and ears on the laneways. Added density would be scattered throughout the city, compensating for the decline in average people per household in the past two decades. How affordable are they? Jake Fry, an builder/designer who has built a number of these cottages despite the regulatory hurdles, says the total cost of a new, detached 400-square-foot granny flat with a 150-square-foot loft, the size and height of a double garage, is under $150,000. If he could add six to 12 inches to the height, he could provide full standing room in the loft. A Vancity mortgage for a 550-square-foot home, 100% financed, is around $935 a month, comparable to potential rental revenue. What about on-street parking congestion? Brian Palmquist, an architect and Dunbar homeowner who managed the community plan for Concord’s north False Creek development, would love to build a Green Granny Flat for his mother-in-law. He surveyed about 200 lots in his neighbourhood and discovered that 40% of the properties had either no garage or had backyard sheds unable to fit a car. Simply using those properties for granny flats would not displace any cars onto the street. Forty per cent of all the single-family lots in Vancouver adds up to around 8,000 units, equivalent to all the towers in North False Creek. What about the added drain on sewers, water supply, gas and electricity? Here’s where Palmquist goes green. He suggests requiring the granny flat to be built to high but achievable green building standards, and the main house to upgrade to a smaller eco-footprint . With that, the net load on the city’s support infrastructure could be zero, and the city gets a per-capita greenhouse gas reduction. All that would be required to do this is a modification to the specs for accessory buildings – instead of limiting them to garages and garden sheds, add “granny flat” and some detailed specs. Speaking of Granny, Fry notes that a laneway housing seniors in three or four of these flats could share a roving full-time care-giver. He estimates the cost of Granny’s new home and full-time (shared) care would be less than $2,500 per month. This is a remarkably simple and do-able application of the city’s EcoDensity principles. • Peter Ladner (www.peterladner.ca) is a Vancouver city councillor and vice-president, Business in Vancouver Media Group,
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