Newsletter August 22, 2020
Is there a reason to be suspicious?
Part 1 (First of 2 Newsletters)
To answer this question let’s take a look at a couple of current Council and Staff planned approaches for changes to Densification and the current Zoning.
Densification:
(notably basement suites, infill and Airbnb legislation changes and the consequent impacts)
The Vancouver Coastal region has by far the highest number of Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic infections and deaths in BC. Coincidentally, this region is the most congested. Much of the development congestion was caused by the out-of-control housing prices. This resulted in many Councils allowing thousands of secondary units on singe-family lots in their municipalities.
Many lower mainland single-family properties now have as many as three secondary infill units: a basement suite, often a garage-sized laneway house and a garden suite all on the same lot - the majority of which are illegal. Real estate data confirms that the unregulated and untaxed illegal units range from 70-80%.
With the advent of the Covid-19 era, most Oak Bay residents are fortunate they had the foresight to resist developer, real-estate and speculation pressure to allow multiple tenants and unsafe full-cooking facilities in existing basement suites. The District’s current policy allows a separate 2-tenant suite with limited cooking facilities (e.g. microwave, 120-volt hotplate or stove). Generally, Airbnb and infill units are prohibited. Limiting the number of tenants in properties recognizes that the more people in single family dwellings the more chance of spreading this deadly virus.
The Premier of British Columba got it right recently when he said he was concerned about,
“More faces in small spaces”.
It is disturbing then, that Council is at cross purposes with the Province by allowing the Planning Department to proceed with their expensive basement suite initiative - particularly during the current pandemic crisis. The Planning Department was less than upfront holding back a December 20, 2018 Consultant Secondary Suite Report from Residents and Council. The Report contained vital information residents and Council members needed to be aware of prior to a planned series of Secondary Suite meetings scheduled for the following several months. This included a Consultant-and-Staff-led April 25, 2018 open house meeting on suites.
The purpose of these meetings was announced as:
“Hearing from Oak Bay residents is critical. Policy changes on secondary suites could have an impact on tenants, homeowners and neighbours”.
The Consultant’s Secondary Suite Report was not released until 5 months after the Planning Department received it. It was provided in a council meeting agenda on May 23, 2019 under the heading “background review”. More details can be found at oakbaywatch.com in the September 19, 2019 Newsletter.
Zoning:
The Zoning Bylaw and the Planning Department’s practices are currently impacting so many aspects of the community: land use. built form, infrastructure and urban forest etc. This all began in 2007 when Council changed Oak Bay’s highly rated Zoning Bylaw against the advice of the very capable Director of Building and Planning.
He accurately predicted that the change would permit homes to be built that were far too big for the size of their lots - a situation Council was trying to avoid.
In 2010 a new Director of Building and Planning notified Council that there had been many resident complaints about the 2007 zoning change and that the predicted over-building impact was having on adjacent properties and the Community in general. Council recognizHomeed the zoning mistake and called for a review but this was never carried out by the Councillor it was assigned to.
Over the next decade residents prioritized and campaigned for correcting this over-development through many Council submissions and presentations, resident surveys, open meetings and opposition to inappropriate developments.
Unfortunately, in 2014, Council's approval of a new Floor Area Review Committee's recommended and supposedly corrective zoning changes were ineffective. Also, despite the creation of a planner position there is considerable evidence that much of the new development has made the over building impacts much worse. The new planner was supposed to consider how future development would support Oak Bay’s proven desirability and character, thereby relieving residents’ anxieties and concerns about all of the impacts.
The fact that the 2013/14 Floor Area Review Committee (FAR) did not correct the mistake was clearly explained in an in-house Advisory Planning Commission meeting on April 3rd 2018. A member of the 2014 FAR committee explained to commissioners that the FAR Committee had made the mistake of allowing too many exemptions (14 in all).
This resulted in Developers often using many of the zoning exemptions on new developments and “building to the maximum” (see examples, pictures and explanations in Appendix #1). The Advisory Planning Commission minutes failed to report this information.
Now however, the new Council’s and Planning Department’s response is to wait until 2023 to review the Zoning Bylaw. This is despite the year-after-year #1 resident priority to stop over-development through demolitions and the needless, extensive lot to-lot-line clear cutting; runoff issues; invasion of privacy and the many other impacts on Oak Bay’s desirability and character.
Oak Bay Watch Perspective
More suites for Oak Bay?
“More faces in small places” – a Provincial Government concern, is well founded. Therefore, it is difficult to understand how some Council members are still pressing for the need to introduce legislation to add many more suites. Are they not concerned with the health of the community? Increasing the 2-tenant limit, will substantially increase the pandemic virus danger for Oak Bay residents.
Adding more suites will also: increase the fire risk, by doubling the number of stoves in single-family dwellings; increase the number of illegal and unsafe suites; increase enforcement and administration costs to be paid for by all taxpayers and significantly increase traffic and street parking (already a problem). Most of the arguments that these council members provide have no basis in fact and have been proven to be unworkable elsewhere.
Over-building lots – Some Council members just don’t get it and staff doesn’t want to get it. As indicated, the Zoning mistake of extending the allowable building footprints have more often than not had many harmful out-comes.
Allowing houses to be built disproportionate to the lots they occupy, has resulted in significant additional vegetation, tree and soil removal. This has placed much more pressure on the aging and fragile infrastructure; resulted in loss of privacy, views and sunlight for neighbours; required additional blasting, and had a big impact on Oak Bay’s highly-valued streetscapes.
Added to this, it has made it possible for the Planning Department to recommend and allowed developers to build, 4 additional, maximum profit, much bigger houses on subdivided and assembled lots. Developers and their stakeholders, who are already making a killing on the rezoning, would still gain significantly from their investment by modifying their maximum profit practices and building four moderate sized dwellings. The environmental impact also would be far less - Climate Change Working group please note.
To their credit Oak Bay is fortunate residents (so far) to have successfully resisted making some of the development infill mistakes made by many other BC Municipalities. At least four of the current Council members know the intent of the original 2007 Floor Area Committee (FAR) was to prevent, not allow, the over-building of lots that is so common today.
Why has this zoning blunder not been corrected by now? Perhaps the answer lies in allowing too many members of FAR and the Advisory Planning Commission to have connections with the Development and Real Estate Industries. Perhaps Council and Staff have been too accommodating to developers and investors and have overlooked that their primary accountability is to the community.
The Zoning Bylaw correction has taken far to long to rectify and the subsequent impacts are mounting. Residents have alerted Oak Bay Watch to the fact that there are currently 7 clear cut lots in a small section of South Oak Bay. It is not known however, how many of the 235 building permits the District of Oak Bay gave out last year have resulted in clear-cuts. We doubt whether this statistic is being recorded.
Oak Bay’s present secondary suite system is working well, is relatively inexpensive to enforce and control and also satisfies providing ample financial and supportive help to those who need it. The common, widespread Secondary Suite problems that have added congestion and plagued other Communities have been avoided. Regarding the permitting of an unlimited number of suites, we have fared well doing what we are doing, let’s keep doing it.
________________________
*******Please help us continue to provide you with information about Community concerns and Council decisions and actions. Oak Bay Watch members also help community groups with their specific development concerns. Donate to Oak Bay Watch - even $5 or $10 dollars provides expenses for door- to- door handouts and helps us maintain our website. Oak Bay Watch is committed to ensuring the Community gets the full range of information on budget, governance and all key development issues – a well informed opinion cannot be made without this.
(Please use Donate Button at bottom of oakbaywatch.com Home Page)
Keep informed and sign up for our newsletter – bottom of Newsletter Menu Item.
Appendix #1 Pictures & Comment
Is there a reason to be suspicious?
Part 1 (First of 2 Newsletters)
To answer this question let’s take a look at a couple of current Council and Staff planned approaches for changes to Densification and the current Zoning.
Densification:
(notably basement suites, infill and Airbnb legislation changes and the consequent impacts)
The Vancouver Coastal region has by far the highest number of Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic infections and deaths in BC. Coincidentally, this region is the most congested. Much of the development congestion was caused by the out-of-control housing prices. This resulted in many Councils allowing thousands of secondary units on singe-family lots in their municipalities.
Many lower mainland single-family properties now have as many as three secondary infill units: a basement suite, often a garage-sized laneway house and a garden suite all on the same lot - the majority of which are illegal. Real estate data confirms that the unregulated and untaxed illegal units range from 70-80%.
With the advent of the Covid-19 era, most Oak Bay residents are fortunate they had the foresight to resist developer, real-estate and speculation pressure to allow multiple tenants and unsafe full-cooking facilities in existing basement suites. The District’s current policy allows a separate 2-tenant suite with limited cooking facilities (e.g. microwave, 120-volt hotplate or stove). Generally, Airbnb and infill units are prohibited. Limiting the number of tenants in properties recognizes that the more people in single family dwellings the more chance of spreading this deadly virus.
The Premier of British Columba got it right recently when he said he was concerned about,
“More faces in small spaces”.
It is disturbing then, that Council is at cross purposes with the Province by allowing the Planning Department to proceed with their expensive basement suite initiative - particularly during the current pandemic crisis. The Planning Department was less than upfront holding back a December 20, 2018 Consultant Secondary Suite Report from Residents and Council. The Report contained vital information residents and Council members needed to be aware of prior to a planned series of Secondary Suite meetings scheduled for the following several months. This included a Consultant-and-Staff-led April 25, 2018 open house meeting on suites.
The purpose of these meetings was announced as:
“Hearing from Oak Bay residents is critical. Policy changes on secondary suites could have an impact on tenants, homeowners and neighbours”.
The Consultant’s Secondary Suite Report was not released until 5 months after the Planning Department received it. It was provided in a council meeting agenda on May 23, 2019 under the heading “background review”. More details can be found at oakbaywatch.com in the September 19, 2019 Newsletter.
Zoning:
The Zoning Bylaw and the Planning Department’s practices are currently impacting so many aspects of the community: land use. built form, infrastructure and urban forest etc. This all began in 2007 when Council changed Oak Bay’s highly rated Zoning Bylaw against the advice of the very capable Director of Building and Planning.
He accurately predicted that the change would permit homes to be built that were far too big for the size of their lots - a situation Council was trying to avoid.
In 2010 a new Director of Building and Planning notified Council that there had been many resident complaints about the 2007 zoning change and that the predicted over-building impact was having on adjacent properties and the Community in general. Council recognizHomeed the zoning mistake and called for a review but this was never carried out by the Councillor it was assigned to.
Over the next decade residents prioritized and campaigned for correcting this over-development through many Council submissions and presentations, resident surveys, open meetings and opposition to inappropriate developments.
Unfortunately, in 2014, Council's approval of a new Floor Area Review Committee's recommended and supposedly corrective zoning changes were ineffective. Also, despite the creation of a planner position there is considerable evidence that much of the new development has made the over building impacts much worse. The new planner was supposed to consider how future development would support Oak Bay’s proven desirability and character, thereby relieving residents’ anxieties and concerns about all of the impacts.
The fact that the 2013/14 Floor Area Review Committee (FAR) did not correct the mistake was clearly explained in an in-house Advisory Planning Commission meeting on April 3rd 2018. A member of the 2014 FAR committee explained to commissioners that the FAR Committee had made the mistake of allowing too many exemptions (14 in all).
This resulted in Developers often using many of the zoning exemptions on new developments and “building to the maximum” (see examples, pictures and explanations in Appendix #1). The Advisory Planning Commission minutes failed to report this information.
Now however, the new Council’s and Planning Department’s response is to wait until 2023 to review the Zoning Bylaw. This is despite the year-after-year #1 resident priority to stop over-development through demolitions and the needless, extensive lot to-lot-line clear cutting; runoff issues; invasion of privacy and the many other impacts on Oak Bay’s desirability and character.
Oak Bay Watch Perspective
More suites for Oak Bay?
“More faces in small places” – a Provincial Government concern, is well founded. Therefore, it is difficult to understand how some Council members are still pressing for the need to introduce legislation to add many more suites. Are they not concerned with the health of the community? Increasing the 2-tenant limit, will substantially increase the pandemic virus danger for Oak Bay residents.
Adding more suites will also: increase the fire risk, by doubling the number of stoves in single-family dwellings; increase the number of illegal and unsafe suites; increase enforcement and administration costs to be paid for by all taxpayers and significantly increase traffic and street parking (already a problem). Most of the arguments that these council members provide have no basis in fact and have been proven to be unworkable elsewhere.
Over-building lots – Some Council members just don’t get it and staff doesn’t want to get it. As indicated, the Zoning mistake of extending the allowable building footprints have more often than not had many harmful out-comes.
Allowing houses to be built disproportionate to the lots they occupy, has resulted in significant additional vegetation, tree and soil removal. This has placed much more pressure on the aging and fragile infrastructure; resulted in loss of privacy, views and sunlight for neighbours; required additional blasting, and had a big impact on Oak Bay’s highly-valued streetscapes.
Added to this, it has made it possible for the Planning Department to recommend and allowed developers to build, 4 additional, maximum profit, much bigger houses on subdivided and assembled lots. Developers and their stakeholders, who are already making a killing on the rezoning, would still gain significantly from their investment by modifying their maximum profit practices and building four moderate sized dwellings. The environmental impact also would be far less - Climate Change Working group please note.
To their credit Oak Bay is fortunate residents (so far) to have successfully resisted making some of the development infill mistakes made by many other BC Municipalities. At least four of the current Council members know the intent of the original 2007 Floor Area Committee (FAR) was to prevent, not allow, the over-building of lots that is so common today.
Why has this zoning blunder not been corrected by now? Perhaps the answer lies in allowing too many members of FAR and the Advisory Planning Commission to have connections with the Development and Real Estate Industries. Perhaps Council and Staff have been too accommodating to developers and investors and have overlooked that their primary accountability is to the community.
The Zoning Bylaw correction has taken far to long to rectify and the subsequent impacts are mounting. Residents have alerted Oak Bay Watch to the fact that there are currently 7 clear cut lots in a small section of South Oak Bay. It is not known however, how many of the 235 building permits the District of Oak Bay gave out last year have resulted in clear-cuts. We doubt whether this statistic is being recorded.
Oak Bay’s present secondary suite system is working well, is relatively inexpensive to enforce and control and also satisfies providing ample financial and supportive help to those who need it. The common, widespread Secondary Suite problems that have added congestion and plagued other Communities have been avoided. Regarding the permitting of an unlimited number of suites, we have fared well doing what we are doing, let’s keep doing it.
________________________
*******Please help us continue to provide you with information about Community concerns and Council decisions and actions. Oak Bay Watch members also help community groups with their specific development concerns. Donate to Oak Bay Watch - even $5 or $10 dollars provides expenses for door- to- door handouts and helps us maintain our website. Oak Bay Watch is committed to ensuring the Community gets the full range of information on budget, governance and all key development issues – a well informed opinion cannot be made without this.
(Please use Donate Button at bottom of oakbaywatch.com Home Page)
Keep informed and sign up for our newsletter – bottom of Newsletter Menu Item.
Appendix #1 Pictures & Comment
This is basically a small sized uplands mansion on a standard Oak Bay lot. So much for the District’s protection of Street-scapes – Note: the remainder of this lot is mainly paved over.
The smaller home was sold shortly after this new demolition and development.
Backyards of previous Picture
Goodbye Urban Forest – That the Planning Department is recommending and Council is currently approving.
Clearing lots, lot-line-to-lot line, shows the District is not concerned about the loss of most trees, soil and existing vegetation. The Planning Department’s current practice is to count the 2 for 1 protected tree replacement as part of the overall canopy coverage for the property. This however, does not account for what the immediate and long-term mature tree, vegetation and soil loss will be. The research shows most of these saplings don’t survive.
Even if all of the mature trees on a property were counted knowledgeable tree proponents state one mature tree’s benefits are equal to over 200 new replacement sapling’s natural benefits. This means the much-publicized effort to replace the clear cutting with 5000 new tree will only provide the same benefit of 25 mature trees. The Planning Department’s premature tree canopy accounting also means Oak Bay will be losing the benefits the clear-cut trees provide for decades. These include significantly reducing the environmental impacts: e.g. considerably reducing the strain on infrastructure, cooling neighbourhoods and providing the many proven health benefits etc.
Even if all of the mature trees on a property were counted knowledgeable tree proponents state one mature tree’s benefits are equal to over 200 new replacement sapling’s natural benefits. This means the much-publicized effort to replace the clear cutting with 5000 new tree will only provide the same benefit of 25 mature trees. The Planning Department’s premature tree canopy accounting also means Oak Bay will be losing the benefits the clear-cut trees provide for decades. These include significantly reducing the environmental impacts: e.g. considerably reducing the strain on infrastructure, cooling neighbourhoods and providing the many proven health benefits etc.
A sign attached to a clear-cut lot fence – presumably the Developer was hoping no one would notice the devastation.