Steve Payne
Vancouver permit delays holding up 69,500 housing units, developer group says
Canadian ContractorOne builder, Jake Fry of Smallworks, is quoted by the Vancouver Sun article as taking 30 per cent longer to build single family homes than he did five years ago.
“Complex permitting rules” have led to a bureaucracy-created backlog of 69,500 housing units still awaiting approvals in the Greater Vancouver area.
This according to Anne McMullin, president of the Vancouver’s Urban Development Institute.
The UDI is urging Vancouver’s various municipalities to immediately streamline the permit process, especially since the region has a significant shortage of housing.
“It’s a bureaucratic quagmire. Municipalities must reduce processing delays,” McMullin, told the Vancouver Sun in this article published July 25.
“There is no consideration how much time it takes or how much money it costs. We need to build more supply for families, first-time buyers and renters,” McMullin told the newspaper.
Dozens of bureaucratic rules are holding up builders. This can include double-bulb ceiling fixtures, painting steps a specific way – or even building in wiring for a second refrigerator — all unnecessary rules that require inspectors to check the work has been done correctly.
One Vancouver homebuilder, Jake Fry of Smallworks, is quoted in the article that bureaucracy means he is spending “30 per cent longer to build single-family homes” than he did five years ago.
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We are supposed to have responsible government,which is to say they should be forward thinking on solving problems ,instead they are becoming the problem in the first place.
This is probably the reason Canada grows at a snails pace .
The electorate should have the ability to recall those swivel servants can’t preform the job they were hired to do.
I laughed when I read this article. Government on all levels has embedded itself so much into our lives. Should we be surprised when their incompetence and inefficiency brings the wheel of progress to a grinding halt? At the end of the day it is all about money. Government is powerless without our money. They create control and a revenue stream from their permits and red tape. If contractors, developers, and property owners ever banned together and refused to obtain permits things would change. Sure that can persecute the individual and install fear when they are picking on a few, but on a larger scale they would be on their heels and desperate to come to a workable understanding. Left unchecked the process and costs will become much much worse.