WOBO thanks Governor Omkar N. Channan for the Canada update.

Canada’s housing crisis resembles the world’s climate emergency in one central way: most are in favour of finding a solution as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them.

When it comes to housing, that often includes efforts by local governments to densify single-family neighbourhoods. Many who live in them, especially in cities where average house prices are obscene like Toronto and Vancouver, have no problem with multifamily dwellings – but just not in their backyard.

And local councils have long been acquiescing to this vocal minority at the expense of those desperately seeking a place to live.

New Zealand is another country where the cost of housing has, in recent years, become detached from reality. The culprit? Supply, of course. Like it is in this country, housing is often difficult to get built. The approval process is so complex and cumbersome it acts as a deterrent. Then there is NIMBYism on top of it.

There is no such thing as a panacea to our housing woes. But New Zealand has at least put forward an idea whose time may have come in this country as well.

The national government has effectively outlawed detached single-family home zoning in the country’s five largest cities. The legislation allows people to build three homes, three storeys tall, on 50 per cent of their property without consent of municipal authorities. Plans must meet certain requirements.

One analysis predicts the measure will result in as many as 75,000 new homes over eight years.

See what the national government has done here? It has taken decision-making on housing out of the hands of local governments – which are too often beholden to special interest groups and the loudest voices in the room – and given power to the people. Now when certain groups get angry that multifamily housing is “destroying the character of our neighbourhood,” local governments that previously caved to such cries of outrage can say: “Don’t look at us.”

In this regard I can’t help but think of a densification proposal recently featured in The Globe and Mail. An application by a Toronto developer to take two large, single-family lots in the city’s Deer Park neighbourhood and convert them into a 12-unit condo building has been mired in controversy and delay. After three years of trying, the project is no closer to getting approved. Why? Neighbourhood opposition.

New Zealand’s legislation would take care of that.

​https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-new-zealands-bold-housing-law-may-be-a-fit-for-canada