Reduce Housing Approval Times, Allow More
Choices
Home Building Rules Maze
Set municipal housing approval times to weeks, not years. Governments promise to shorten approval times then pile on more red tape, like seismic or green building regulations adding to the thousands of pages for building code rules. Red tape means longer construction permit waits and higher costs to home building. Many homes we need just won't get built. Those growing costs for builders involve lengthy engineering and architectural reports plus annual fees like property taxes, insurance, mortgage interest etc. All these costs are passed on to buyers and renters.
Nearly 2,000 Pages of Rules
The Proof?
A recent UBC study of two BC cities of comparable size Kelowna and Coquitlam clearly shows how one fixed its housing approval process and built more homes.
"When Kelowna rezoned parts of the city to allow more density, officials also streamlined the permitting process — including providing a series of pre-approved designs — that brought approval times down to as little as two to three weeks. The city now has far more multiplex units than Coquitlam, where the permitting process was left unchanged after rezoning.
From 2022 to 2024, 210 multiplex units were built in rezoned parts of Kelowna. Only 16 were built in Coquitlam during the same period, according to the study."
Kelowna Wins
on Deregulation
Duplication Adds Costs
Why do civic governments require additional engineering and architectural reviews of housing projects when they've already been prepared and signed off by these qualified professionals working for home builders?
Would you hire two plumbers at the same time at significant cost to fix your leaky faucet?
Canada 3X Slower Than USA Construction Permit
Times
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A new 2025 CD Howe Institute Report: "It also takes nearly 250 days to obtain a building permit from the municipalities or the regional authorities in Canada – three times longer than in the US – placing Canada 34th out of 35 OECD countries in building permit timelines."
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"Municipal permit approval is slow for all types of housing; Inconsistency among municipalities in interpreting building codes; Duplicative inspections create inefficiencies & difficulties; Regulatory inefficiencies push firms out of Canada.
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"The average approval time in Canada for new housing projects is about 14 months, with significant variations ranging from 3 to 32 months, depending on the municipality (Altus Group, 2022)."
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A Canadian Municipal Land Use & Regulation Survey confirms "municipalities with long approval times and higher backlogs in approvals (such as Toronto or Vancouver) face generally higher affordability challenges (Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation CMHC, 2023)." Approval delays mean higher costs and more people moving to cities like Edmonton in search of affordable housing.
"In the OECD, only the Slovak Republic takes longer to approve construction projects. That's 168 days slower than the USA." -ICBA BC
The longer the wait for a housing project approval and construction permit, the more they cost to rent or buy.
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Remove red tape thats crippling all construction of any kind, whether it's housing or other infrastructure and resource projects we need for our economy. Copy California. They just froze addition of any new building code regulations for the state and municipalities for SIX YEARS.
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We must build faster and allow more home choices for all budgets like row homes or even float homes. A "Nexus Lane" for pre-approved housing designs, like high-rises and low-rises, would help.
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Little improvement on speeding up housing approval has been made on the current Vancouver's Mayor's promises to implement a 3-3-3-1 timeline: "home renovations approved in three days; single-family homes and townhouses in three weeks; professionally designed multi-family and mid-rise projects within existing zoning in three months; and high-rise or large-scale projects in a year."
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The Vancouver Sun reported: "Average permitting times for home renovations fell from 51 to 22 days between 2022 and 2024 — a reduction of 57 per cent, but still far from ABC’s goal of three days. Median processing time for mid-rise developments fell from 18.9 months in 2023 to 14.7 months last year, a significant reduction but still more than four times ABC’s three-month target.
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Permit times for low-density housing increased from 38 weeks in 2022 to 44 in 2023, due to a surge of applications. Since then, the average has fallen to 25 weeks — still a far cry from ABC’s promised three weeks.”
Video: The Long &
Short Of it!
Watch our full-length two minute video or our 30-second short to learn more about the regulatory burdens on housing and what this means to home buyers and renters. Share if you care!
