New Rules Help Deliver Housing Faster In B.C.

New regulations are in effect meant to standardize and improve community planning in the province to make it easier to get more homes for people built faster.

Changes were made in the fall to facilitate the delivery of more housing and provide more certainty and transparency of rezoning processes instead of a drawn-out, costly and restrictive approach.

The province says the shift involves more upfront community planning by local governments and improvements to outdated zoning rules, which will make it easier to increase different types of housing in the province.

Local governments will continue to complete Housing Needs Reports every five years and will now be required to use a new provincial standardized method, for calculating housing needs.

That would provide a more comparable and consistent approach to identifying the number of housing units to address current and anticipated needs over five and 20 years in each community.

Other changes include a new requirement to include information about the need for housing close to transit, cycling and pedestrian infrastructure.

All local governments must complete an interim HNR by January 1st and must update their official community plans and zoning bylaws by the end of 2025.

In each municipality, the updated OCP and zoning bylaws must accommodate the number of housing units identified in the HNR.

The changes build on and align with the new requirements related to small-scale multi-unit housing and other recent legislative changes.

To see the full release, visit Government of British Columbia.