A year of legal fourplexes, nine actually built: what's stalling gentle density
Council legalized fourplexes citywide to real fanfare. The permit data says the hard part was never the zoning.
A year after council legalized fourplexes on residential lots citywide — a vote that drew provincial praise and a packed gallery — the building department's data tells a quieter story: nine have been built. Applications number a few dozen. The zoning revolution is, so far, a rounding error.
The Bulletin walked the file with three small builders to find the stall point, and it isn't the bylaw. It's everything the bylaw sits on: servicing charges calculated as if each unit were a detached house, a committee-of-adjustment queue for every lot that deviates an inch from the template, and financing — lenders still price a fourplex as a commercial project, which pushes small builders out exactly where small builders are the intended market.
The city's own housing staff, to their credit, flagged most of this in the original report; the recommendations that would have addressed it — a pre-approved plan catalogue, a dedicated permit stream, servicing charges by bedroom rather than by unit — were deferred as follow-up work. They remain followed up on by no one.
Nine buildings is not a failure of the idea; it is a measurement of the friction. The zoning was the visible half of the reform. The invisible half is scheduled for a staff report this winter, and the Bulletin will read it against the only metric that matters: the number after nine.
