nOVEmBER 2018 BCBusiness 13
"Y
ou could pretty
much go to any
cocktail party,
any conversation, any Tim
Hortons or coee shop, and
you're going to have the same
discourse happening around
housing," says Jake Fry, best
known for his Vancouver •rm
Smallworks, which builds
laneway homes. "And the
challenges are uniform," Fry
continues. "The dollar value
may change, and drivers may
be dierent between Penticton
and Vernon and Terrace and
Kerrisdale, but the challenge
is there."
Fry has found that people
are increasingly looking for
housing that meets but doesn't
surpass their needs and accom-
modates their budgets. In
response, in 2012 he and Bob
Ransford, now VP development
at real estate •rm Century
Group in Vancouver, founded
Small Housing BC (
SHBC), a not-
for-pro•t society to study and
advocate for homes between
100 and 1,500 square feet.
Recently
SHBC began sharing
its research. This year Fry
and
SHBC project managers
Anastasia Koutalianos and
Samantha Gambling visited or
video-conferenced with some
20 municipalities across the
province, outlining the advan-
tages of constructing fewer
apartment buildings and more
small in•lls or larger structures
that might look like a house but
contain multiple residences.
Not only can this approach
add households to neighbour-
hoods without changing their
character, but in•ll homes
might also be quicker for plan-
ners to approve while suiting
residents' requirements better
than more traditional develop-
ments, Fry explains.
"Most neighbourhoods
middle ground
Most new homes built in B.C. are small condos or large detached houses.
But one solution to the aordability crisis may lie somewhere in between
by Felicity Stone
HO U S I NG
(
the informer
)
O N
T H E
R ADA R
sIze mATTeRs
800
Average square
footage of a
Canadian home
in 1945
4
Number of people
typically living in
a Canadian home
in 1945
2,000+
Average square
footage of a B.C.
home today
2.5
Number of people
typically
living in a B.C.
home today
sOURCE: smaLL hOUsing BC
PRICe POInTs
Based on income alone,
spending 40 percent of it
on housing and ignoring the
federal mortgage stress test,
how many households in metro
Vancouver can afford to buy a
home worth more than:
$1.1 million
24.2%
$1.5 million
16.7%
$1.7 million
8%
sOURCE: miChaEL mORtEnsEn, smaLL
hOUsing BC, Using 2015 VanCOUVER
Cma CEnsUs hOUsEhOLd inCOmE
LEss is MorE
Home builder Jake Fry
sees room for smaller
houses in b.C.
COURtEsY Of smaLL hOUsing BC
