Laneway Housing
Had a chance to meet with Jake Fry, one of the principles of Smallworks in his shop in the Southlands (above), right on the edge of the Fraser.
Smallworks is well named: truly a small company working to provide Vancouver with a practical choice. Namely, the laneway house:
I loved the concept from the time I first heard of it from Peter Ladner a few years ago. And City Council has so far been unanimously supportive, authorizing the Planning Department to move forward with a zoning initiative that should be out sometime this year.
Another example has an enclosed garage included, with a loft above the main studio space.
Brent Toderian, the Planning Director, calls laneway housing ‘hidden density’ since you can’t see the house from the front street. And even from the lane, it has less impact than some of the adjacent garages:
Change is always greeted sceptically, especially in established neighbourhoods like this one. But at least to my eye, this is an elegant solution to a vexing problem – housing choice and, to some extent, affordability.
We’ll follow its progress as it makes it way through Council to lanes across the city.
laneway housing will do little to curb the problem of affordability, inefficient delivery of services, and housing accessibility. This is simply a political move to appease those who fear density but for one political reason or another have agreed to let something change.
n.b. this will only increase density to roughly 10 upa, not enough in the slightest sense to make these existing neighbourhoods pedestrian friendly.
I agree that laneway housing preserves the status quo – the dream of a single family home with a front yard and the relatively low densities that result. Is this enough density to offset the demands on suburban muncipalities for additional housing stock on undeveloped land? I don’t think so. It’s an effort, but amounts to lip service.
If you look to older cities around the world – I doubt you would find tracts of single single family homes so close to the core of a city. They would have been replaced by multi-storey apartment buildings years before.
Here’s a photo of some laneway housing built somewhere in Vancouver a few years ago:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/spacing/1120979449/sizes/o/
John Wilson — I believe those photos are from Grant Street in the block just West of Commercial Drive. The “Drive” area has a lot of new similar housing, as well as a number of coach houses off the lanes — and even on lane-free blocks — dating back to the 1910s (although some of the coach houses used to be garages).
I’d love to see more laneway housing — they add character, allow for a more diverse mix of people living in the neighborhood, and help to support a more walkable community. Plus, they do create a variety of more affordable housing options: rental suites provide a place for young people to rent and offer a mortgage helper for young families barely able to own; they can also be in the form of strata title homes, that are a good less-expensive option for many individuals or couples.
In smaller towns laneway housing can work really well. Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island has recently added a bunch of laneway housing near the town centre, and they look really great because they match the small-town look and feel of Qualicum while still providing increased density. For Vancouver, I don’t think laneway housing is good enough to address affordability and (lack of) density. West Side (and East Van) neighbourhoods are just going to have to accept change at some point.
Good point that laneway housing would work in smaller village-like settings.
I have to disagree with comments that Laneway Housing is ineffective at reducing density. First of all, I don’t know what the specific units per acre measurement is, if it is 10 with this, but density is really about people. Commerial drive, Main Street, these are already very walkable and densely populated neighbourhoods and the density can be increased by a lot. Other neighbourhoods could see double the density with laneway housing, and there are other opportunities for infill housing than just laneways. But if anyone doesn’t believe walkable densities aren’t possible in house neighbourhoods, check the density map available at regardingplace.com.
Laneway housing should be one strategy of several, including many more 4-8 story residential buildings, and town centres with much higher density levels, however it doesn’t make sense to just paint the entire city with yaletown style condos and lose all the variety, and create other problems when density isn’t well planned and transit services can’t keep up. It also wouldn’t work, as opposition would be massive.
This way density can be increased very quickly and by quite a profound amount in areas that would otherwise go untouched, which is far better than doing nothing in these areas.
Of course you will see double the density with any neighbourhood that currently has one 1 upa when you add a coach house onto the property. Most vancouver properties on the west side are about 1/4 acre, with east side properties being about 1/6 acre. For most east side properties, their is already a stretch when examining the potential to add coach houses as their neighbourhood infrastructure was not designed to handle the additional people and cars (along with the small lots – although smaller lots have held coach houses in other cities, albeit with supportive infrastructure). West side has greater ease.
You need approximately 30 upa to achieve some level of transit-oriented communities. One need not look at just how many commercial shops and the amount of people to determine how successful a retail strip is, but the amount of people out during the weekday morning to truly see if it is of the proper density and mixture of uses.
Last I checked, the Main Street bus is the busiest regular bus in the entire city of Vancouver. If much of Main Street isn’t a transit oriented community I don’t know what is. I agree there is not much space for more cars in East Van, but I don’t think that’s a problem – as many East Van residents I know already use transit for whatever reason. I think we need to stop looking at houses as “single family houses” and rather homes that are used in a myriad of purposes, that can fit up to seven roommates going to school depending on the house, two full families, often have secondary or third suites and with coach houses can support even more people. These sorts of living arrangements need to be encouraged, and in some cases made legal, with the use of form based zoning so we aren’t trying to stick to old notions of “single family houses.”
Coach houses should be used on smaller lots in my opinion, and lots should be made small, especially relative to what exists in the west side, although in some areas of the East side, though this isn’t a big problem there.
As for infrastructure, I’m unaware of the state of that in the city. It can however be upgraded and will need to be upgraded in any case to add any level of new density, especially if coach houses are going to be a problem.
I don’t know how you classify the main st. bus route as being one of the busiest ones (i havent looked at any stats), but I would wager that broadway far exceeds main st, even the 98 bline likely exceeds main st. demand. i think the main problem with the new hub of main street is that there are still far too many cars using that street for through purposes as well as shopping, instead of people. The lack of people actually arriving on main st by foot is a greater indicator of how poorly self-sufficient the neighbourhood truly is, although it still beats many other neighbourhoods.
Regardless of how many people we try to fit in a single-family home, or what the composition of the people that live in the home, the fact that homes are often limited to 3500 sq. ft on 1/6 acre lots significantly reduces the possible FAR. Even if you somehow manage to get three families in a single-family dwelling including a coach house, just based on the layout of the density, it is impossible to get rid of the car dependence.
I don’t remember where I saw that information, it was some years ago now – it was being used to justify new bus stops jutting out into the streets, and is also the reason the #3 route was the first to get the articulated trollies full time. (I wasn’t including B-lines in this, though I think we can agree that traffic is mostly people who don’t live in the area).
And while I’ve seen no stats on what proportion of Main street people used transit/walked to get there, and don’t think they exist, I expect it’s one of the highest in the city outside the downtown core, and same with commercial drive. These neighbourhoods were created by the streetcar and public transit, remember, not the car.
And what I would like to see in any city is a strong mix of building types. Again, I don’t think we want to just spread density evenly across the city, but rather strategically zone with transit oriented development policies in mind. Given that, areas like Main street are likely to be less dense than areas like Oakridge. The minimum density I would like to see is very small lot homes with laneway and other infill housing built, and I would like to see lots more row houses or row apartment walk-ups with laneway housing built, like is common in other cities.
Though we do agree on one main thing at least: density is needed.
Laneway housing is one of the early action items from the EcoDensity initiative, passed unanimously by council in June 2008. It’s been politically challenging, as some neighbourhoods are dubious, but generally, like secondary suites, the city might as well get on board as people are building them anyway. So I was happy to lead the LWH initiative in the last council and to continue to push for action in this council, which appears to be in support. I’m hoping for final approval by public hearing in September, then Jake and the other builders in the city can start building.
Good story on this:
http://tinyurl.com/brjl5f or http://www.canada.com/vancouvercourier/news/story.html?id=a7c48673-595e-4d4b-bcdf-ee6ce66313a8
I’ve moved out of my parents’ Dunbar “single family home” with an empty single car garage into a one bedroom basement suite in Dunbar that has an empty two car garage. I’ve found Dunbar to be a walkable neighbourhood and I commute by bike or bus; Linda MacAdam is an embarrassment me as a Dunbar resident.