Happy (Belated) National Housing Day!

I think we can all agree that it feels as though there’s a “National Something Day” every day. It would be a perfectly fair question to ask if we really need a National Cheeseburger Day (September 18), Bubble Bath Day (January 8), or Pigs in a Blanket Day (April 24 - also my birthday). However, I’ll leave that up to you all to decide for yourselves. 

However, one day that I can absolutely get behind occurred on Friday, November 22, and that was National Housing Day. It’s a day that the CMHC says is supposed to raise awareness about the need for an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to tackle the housing crisis across the country. Nobody really needs to be convinced that there’s a problem, and I am wholeheartedly a “we need to do more to get more supply built” kind of guy. I’m proud of my record on housing during my time on Council, and for National Housing Day I thought it would be nice to make a short post highlighting the current state of development applications in the Township of Langley. One thing led to another, however, and I ended up spending hours going through every single Council meeting this term during my research. So I apologize that this housing-related post wasn’t made on National Housing Day, but hopefully you still find it worth the short read!

Many of you who follow Council regularly (or try to) know the stages of a development application’s journey from submission to Final Approval and eventually construction. If you’d like, you can skip to here. But for those who might not be as familiar, here is the extremely quick Coles notes: 

1. An application is submitted to staff, and staff work with the proponent to make sure the application meets certain criteria. If the application doesn’t require Council approval, it receives Delegated Approval by staff. If it does, then it proceeds to step 2:

2. First and Second Reading. These two ‘Readings’ happen at the same time and are the first time Council sees an application in detail. Generally speaking, if an application meets the guidelines of whichever Community and Neighbourhood Plans apply, it’s approved at First and Second. If the application requires an amendment to a Municipal Plan, then it goes to a Public Hearing for the community to provide input, but if it doesn’t then it heads to step 3:

3. Third Reading. At this stage, Council will generally have heard any feedback from the community about the application, and if a Councillor is comfortable with the project as it is, then they’ll vote to approve the application in principle at this stage. Approval at Third Reading is importation, because the potential developer then has to meet a whole bunch of conditions such as building the road along the site’s frontages, submitting an official tree management plan, and the payment of Community Amenity Contributions (CACs) prior to receiving approval at step 4:

4. Final Adoption.  If an application has reached this stage, it means it has met all the conditions set for it and the builder will likely be applying for a Building Permit in the near future, after which they’ll be building badly needed homes. 

Right, now that that’s done, on to the interesting stuff. What I wanted to know after all of this were a few things: how many units of housing has this Council approved this term at Third Reading and at Final Adoption, and what was the corresponding value of CACs at both stages?

Since an application that’s received Final Adoption will either be starting construction soon or has already started, and has paid all CACs, those are important stats to be aware of. While projects that have received Third Reading might not start construction for any number of years, it is now out of Council’s hands how quickly they proceed to construction as it’s now an issue of the proponent and Township staff working through all of the conditions set. So without further ado, here are the numbers.* 

Third Reading

In 2023, the first full year of this Council’s term, there were 2,404 units of housing approved at Third Reading. This figure was made up of 191 single family homes, 784 townhomes, rowhomes, or plexes, and 1,429 apartment units. 8 single family homes were granted Third Reading in 2022. In total, these units will contribute approximately $40,043,960 in Community Amenity Contributions when they eventually reach Final Approval. In 2024, Council granted Third Reading to 33 single family homes, 934 townhomes, rowhomes, or plexes, and 981 apartments. This amounts to approximately $33,241,202 in CACs. This means that the 2022-2026 Council has so far approved 4,352 units of housing at Third Reading with a total of $73,285,162 in expected CACs. This CAC figure does not take into account any CACs arising from non-residential applications.

Final Adoption

It’s well known that it’s not simple to build housing, and there can absolutely be a conversation about what municipalities could do to make it simpler. I believe the Township has made strides to improve, but progress isn’t always clear. What is clear is how many projects have reached Final Adoption so far this term and so are soon-to-be or already under construction. In 2023, Council granted Final Adoption to 376 units, which consisted of 80 single family homes, 217 townhomes, rowhomes, or plexes, and 79 apartments. These projects contributed approximately $2,116,966 in CACs, as they had to be paid in order to receive Final Adoption. In the words of my favourite Matthew McConaughey character, those are rookie numbers. Things have improved in 2024 thanks to a big increase in the number of apartment units given Final Adoption. In total, 2,976 units so far have been given the green light in 2024. Of those, 81 are single family homes, 261 are multi-family, and 2,634 are apartment units. With these housing units came significant CACs, with any portions that are due to density bonus policies to be paid at the Building Permit stage instead of prior to Final Adoption. However, when all is said and done and people are living in these units, these projects will have contributed $29,852,181 in CACs.

So there it is! At the two stages of the development process that Council plays the most important role, we’ve approved 7,704 units of housing so far. It’s always important to remember that Council doesn’t build homes ourselves, we set the table for them to be built and it’s up to developers to do the rest. This post wasn’t intended as a critique, it is simply the synthesis of some research I wanted to do for myself, and hopefully, you find it as interesting as I do. We’ve certainly still got more to do to restore housing affordability across the Lower Mainland, but I’m so far pleased with the small role I’ve been able to play in helping. 

*while I've done my absolute best to try and make sure all figures mentioned above are accurate, I may have missed an application, or my math may have been off somewhere, and for that I apologize in advance!