Dan Fumano: Responding to city council's direction to speed up affordable housing, Vancouver staff propose enabling social housing towers across big chunks of the city.

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Vancouver is considering boosting social housing in a notoriously unaffordable market by allowing projects of up to 18 storeys in areas around the city, including many residential side streets, without a time-consuming rezoning process.

The intent is to make it easier, faster, and less expensive to build several kinds of non-market housing, including co-ops, apartment buildings operated by non-profit societies with tenants paying a range of rents, and supportive housing for people transitioning out of homelessness.

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City staff are proposing sweeping zoning changes to enable projects up to six storeys in some areas and up to 18 storeys in others. That means non-profits could skip rezoning and simply get a development permit before starting construction.

The plan, released Wednesday by city staff, is a response to direction from the ABC-majority council to speed up construction of non-market housing by ending the requirement for such developments to go through individual rezonings. It does not stem from density requirements being imposed by the provincial government, but city staff say the move aligns with the province’s direction.

Rezoning can take a year or more, and cost $500,000 or more for a non-profit housing society trying to build homes, said Dan Garrison, Vancouver’s director of housing policy and regulation.

Over the past decade, the city has approved about 12 social housing projects a year, Garrison said. That number is expected to increase if these changes are approved by council, he said, but he did not provide an estimate.

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