A year after being named to the so-called “naughty list,” the District of West Vancouver has fallen about 75 per cent short of its target for new housing, staff say.
Under the provincially set targets, West Vancouver was expected to produce 220 new homes by Sept. 30. According to a staff report delivered to council Monday, there were in fact 58, most of them single-family houses with secondary suites, said senior planner David Hawkins.
The net number of new units in the province’s targets for West Vancouver grows annually from 462 in 2025 to 1,432 in 2028.
Although behind now, Hawkins said council will be trending in the right direction in future years, as already approved developments are built and planning processes like the Ambleside Local Area Plan come to completion.
If you add up all of the housing units currently under construction, granted permits or in the final stages of permitting, there are another 781 units that will come online in future years of the five-year targets, and a potential 1,000 to 1,200 units making their way through the municipality’s planning process, though he cautioned there is no guarantee as to how many of them will be approved and built, or when.
Coun. Nora Gambioli questioned what consequences council might face if West Vancouver inevitably fails to meet the province’s targets.
“We’re not going to get anywhere near these numbers for the rest of the term of this council,” she said. “There’s no possible way that we could even be half way there to that target, according to what’s in the pipeline.”
Hawkins said he wouldn’t want to speculate on exactly what may come, but he said the legislation allows the province to appoint an advisor to review a council’s processes and previous decisions and then direct the municipality to make change, amend bylaws or approve permits.
Council members and planning staff have frequently criticized the province’s choice to use occupancy permits as the metric to judge municipality’s housing progress, as there is always a two- to three-year lag between developments being approved and residents moving in.
They’ve also said councils shouldn’t be held responsible for slow housing completions, which may be due to outside factors like labour shortages, market conditions or higher interest rates.
“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink,” Coun. Linda Watt said, noting that other municipalities have also seen declining building activity.
West Van resident Gary Powroznik, however, suggested council should look inward before assigning so much blame to external conditions.
“I have been advocating for lower-cost housing and market housing to get kids back, our grandkids and workers, and so I’ve been asking a lot of the developers as to why. Obviously, there’s a record of turning down proposals, but there’s also a record of developers saying they don’t think West Van is interested in development,” he told council. “I’ve also heard that it’s very expensive to try to get a proposal through here in terms of a lot of work that has to be done up front, a lot of money has to be spent, and a lot of time, which is not necessarily like other municipalities.”
Immediately following, council voted unanimously to advance a redevelopment proposal for 1485 Clyde Ave. in Ambleside. The site currently holds a two-storey building with vacant commercial space at ground level and apartments on top, which a developer is seeking to replace with a three-storey mixed-used building including three rental apartments.
Council’s vote, however, does not guarantee that the proposal will go ahead. Since 2017, West Vancouver has had a policy to not consider rezonings for properties where local area plans have not yet been completed unless they “deliver significant social benefit,’ as determined by council. There is no timeline for when Ambleside’s Local Area Plan will be complete but, because the project includes purpose-built rentals, council agreed it could be entered into the usual rezoning process.
“I know the area well, and I can tell you the neighbours are going to be thrilled to see this rebuilt,” Mayor Mark Sager said.
