The need for change in housing

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This article was published 22/01/2024 (633 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Just before Christmas, Winnipeg became the 13th city in Canada to sign on to the federal government’s Housing Accelerator Fund. The program brings both levels of government together to work collaboratively on initiatives that accelerate new housing construction to increase market supply and in turn, promote affordability.

Signing on to the program was the easy part. Now, the hard work begins.

If we are being forthright about our desire to tackle the housing crisis, we must accept that our neighbourhoods are going to change.

People need homes and they have to be built somewhere. The city can no longer afford to grow through sprawling development on the periphery, and we can’t expect all new housing to be in large apartment blocks on urban highways or downtown. People want to live in neighbourhoods.

A future for all Canadian cities that is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable will require greater housing diversity and higher densities, embedded within the traditional single-family neighbourhoods that make up the bulk of our existing cities.

Small-scale multi-family buildings like townhouses, duplexes, fourplexes and small apartments will be vital to increasing housing supply while providing an affordable and high quality of life for new residents.

Small-scale multi-family buildings like townhouses, duplexes, fourplexes and small apartments will be vital to increasing housing supply while providing an affordable and high quality of life for new residents.

To achieve this, the federal government is requiring that Winnipeg reform its zoning bylaws to allow a four-plex on any single-family lot in the city.

This will certainly create public resistance from those lucky enough to already own a house, but to be against higher-density neighbourhood growth, is to oppose providing good places for families to live and is one of the root causes of Canada’s housing crisis today.

With high land, construction and financing costs, the development economics of small-scale, neighbourhood-focused, infill buildings can be challenging, and implementing higher-density zoning alone has proven to be insufficient in unlocking this type of development in impactful amounts.

To be successful, other complementary reforms must be considered.

Additional regulatory changes to setback requirements, height restrictions and lot coverage allowances contribute to making diverse housing projects more viable, and perhaps most significantly, the elimination of mandatory parking requirements is a policy change that many cities are finding to be impactful.

In Winnipeg, the government requires the construction of 1.5 parking stalls for every residential unit built, reduced to 1.2 in some inner-city areas.

When a fourplex requires six parking stalls, it consumes so much land area that many infill properties lose their viability. For a small apartment building, structured parking can be responsible for as much as 20 per cent of the overall construction cost, a value that is passed on to the tenants in higher rents.

Before eliminating its parking minimums, the City of Edmonton found that they were responsible for 50 per cent more parking being built than needed.

When developers are free to build as much parking as is required to make their projects leasable, they typically build less, resulting in reduced development costs and more affordable housing becoming available.

When developers are free to build as much parking as is required to make their projects leasable, they typically build less, resulting in reduced development costs and more affordable housing becoming available.

Since eliminating mandatory parking minimums, Minneapolis has seen the amount of parking being built cut in half, contributing to significant growth in new housing construction and a greater market supply that has reduced average rental rates.

Considering creative modifications to the building code can also complement zoning reform to make small-scale infill development more viable.

An innovative code reform that is being studied in British Columbia is to permit the construction of buildings called ‘point access blocks.’

These are small- and medium-scale apartment buildings with a single staircase and elevator serving all suites. It’s a building type that has been commonly built across the world for centuries but is illegal in Canada. If you’ve been to Europe, you’ve likely stayed in one, with suites on each floor opening directly to a central stair and small elevator.

It may sound banal, but allowing this type of apartment building would create enormous possibilities for small buildings in our cities.

In Canada, all buildings taller than two storeys require two staircases, located at opposite ends of the building. This requirement can take up a lot of room in a small apartment, reducing leasable area, making them less economically viable, and limiting design flexibility.

To offset this decreased efficiency, most apartment buildings in Canada are made larger and incorporate a double-loaded corridor, like a hotel, with suites on each side, and a stair at each end. This layout is partly why new multi-family buildings often look so similar, and it results in most suites having access to only one exterior wall.

To successfully address Canada’s housing crisis, it will be critical that cities find ways to make small-scale infill development viable in mature neighbourhoods.

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A point access block typically has four units per floor wrapping around a central stair, with each suite having access to a corner and second exterior wall, resulting in more windows, natural cross ventilation, and the potential for more bedrooms. Fire safety is maintained using sprinkler systems, fire-rated construction, short travel distances and smaller building types with lower occupancies.

The increased efficiency of single-stair buildings would make the economics of small-lot infill development more viable and invite smaller developers, with less access to capital, to build more housing. The variation in design of narrow, fine-grained buildings that point access blocks create, often result in more interesting urban streetscapes than the block-long multi-family buildings we typically build in Canada.

To successfully address Canada’s housing crisis, it will be critical that cities find ways to make small-scale infill development viable in mature neighbourhoods.

To achieve this, it will require composing a complementary network of initiatives that incorporate new ideas such as point access blocks, parking minimums and zoning reform to make cities more affordable and livable in the future.

Brent Bellamy is creative director at Number Ten Architectural Group.

Brent Bellamy
Columnist

Brent Bellamy is creative director for Number Ten Architectural Group.

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