View Royal’s mayor says the municipality has more homes under construction than a five-year housing target set by the province, which recently released housing goals for a third group of B.C. communities, including four on the Island.
There are 786 units under construction in View Royal, said Sid Tobias — significantly more than the 585 the province is asking the municipality to add within five years.
Tobias doesn’t anticipate any trouble meeting the number of net-new housing units mandated by the province, but the required makeup of those units could be a challenge, he said.
The province provides municipalities with guidelines for the composition of units, including the number of bedrooms, rental versus owned units and below-market-price rentals.
Those details are driven by the market and are “a little bit out of our control,” Tobias said, adding there seems to be a reluctance to build three-bedroom units.
A blanket rezoning by the municipality to allow up to four units on a standard residential lot to comply with the province has also made planning infrastructure challenging, he said.
Normally, the town could focus on a specific area for development and ensure infrastructure meets the needs of a growing population, Tobias said.
“But with the blanket rezoning, the town has less control over knowing where those areas are going to be developed. Up to four units per lot adds a significant strain on essentially a rural road with open ditches and no sidewalks,” he said.
Colwood, North Saanich and North Cowichan are also among the latest round of municipalities to receive a housing target from the province.
Colwood Mayor Doug Kobayashi echoed Tobias’s concerns about the infrastructure demands of a growing population.
Kobayashi said Colwood’s target of 940 new housing units is doable but he is concerned that the targets don’t come with funding to upgrade infrastructure like sewer and schools for a larger population.
“That’s the big problem right now with being managed from another level of government telling you what you’re going to do. They can tell you all you want, but if there’s nothing, no monies, that come with it, it makes it challenging,” he said.
North Saanich Mayor Peter Jones called the target of 419 new homes for the district a reasonable number.
Staff are looking at where higher density could fit in the municipality, which will be largely driven by infrastructure constraints, especially water for fire suppression, Jones said.
“Three-, four- or five-storey condos, as an example, is difficult to do in certain locations because the infrastructure isn’t there to provide the fire water, as an example. So we’re kind of limited in some ways to small density areas of lower-height homes.”
The latest round of targets would lead to more than 17,000 new housing units if communities meet the province’s goals.
Municipalities are evaluated on their progress after six months, and then every year.
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