As the region’s housing crunch continues, proposals to build thousands of homes are waiting for review by city planners and politicians.
Developers have submitted applications to build more than 2,000 apartment and townhouse units, with another 900 single-family houses also in the works.
But those applications, along with a surge in industrial development, have left Abbotsford’s planning department scrambling to keep up.
The city is now set to hire four new planners to try to address the surge in building proposals.
“We need help processing a number of large files in the hopper,” city manager George Murray told council Monday. In addition to the residential projects, the city is also dealing with an uptick in complex and time-intensive industrial applications, Murray said.
A 2017 Fraser Institute report put Abbotsford in the middle of the pack among Lower Mainland municipalities for the length of time it takes to have a housing project approved by city hall.
Abbotsford’s typical approval time was 12.2 months, slightly longer than the regional average of 10.2 months. Several municipalities approved projects in nine months or less, while others took much longer. On average, the City of Vancouver took 21 months to approve a project, the longest in the region, the report said.
During the recent BC Liberal leadership contest, several candidates said encouraging municipalities to speed up approvals was key to addressing rising home prices and lack of rental housing.
In a report to council, staff expressed hope the proposed new units would boost the supply of rental housing.
“The prompt and efficient delivery of these units will hopefully assist in addressing the city’s 0.2 per cent vacancy rate, which is no doubt impacting affordability in Abbotsford.”
All those projects waiting for approval come as Abbotsford comes off its busiest year for development ever.
The city had issued $480 million worth of building permits in 2017, council heard Monday. That scale of activity is unprecedented, with no other previous year surpassing $400 million.
The projects awaiting approval suggest those figures will continue to rise. Indeed, 2018 has already seen construction begin on Mayne Coatings’ new Clearbrook Road siding manufacturing plant. That project is one of the largest industrial developments in Abbotsford’s history.
“I don’t see the load lightening in 2018,” Mayor Henry Braun said Monday.
The city will pay for the new planning positions with higher-than-anticipated tax and fee revenue from recent developments.
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tolsen@abbynews.com
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