24 S m all w o r k s
B C B U S I N E S S . C A
J U LY/A U G U S T 2 0 24
by Frances Bula
Frances Bula is a long-time
Vancouver journalist and
the 2023 recipient of the
Bruce Hutchison Lifetime
Achievement Award from the
Jack Webster Foundation.
built (300 to 400 a year in
recent years) is the unfortu-
nate but inevitable outcome of
city policies that make those
backyard houses a dicey finan-
cial choice except in special
circumstances. And that's a
waste of a huge resource.
"We're dealing with a really
large cohort of homeowners—
upwards of 50 percent—that
don't have a huge mortgage,"
he says. "The largest group of
residential landowners in the
country are sitting without an
exit strategy."
The current city policy in
Vancouver (along with every
other municipality that al-
lows rentals) does not allow
laneway homes built in most
of the city to be sold, period,
end of story. Those built on
a property with a pre-1940s
house can be sold, but only if
Builder Jake Fry has a
simple idea that he believes
could produce at least 30,000
new small homes in Vancou-
ver over the next decade. For
context, that's as much as the
entire Broadway Plan has set
as its target amount of new
housing for the same period.
The idea: let Vancouver
homeowners sell the laneway
homes they're willing to make
room for in their backyards
instead of being restricted
to only renting them. Unlike
the current Broadway Plan,
which is trying to squeeze
30,000 new apartments into
a relatively restricted strip
of the city (and coping with
the demolition of affordable
older apartment buildings that
has many people worried),
laneway homes would be a
relatively low-impact way of
making room for newcomers.
It's something that California
has just authorized as of Octo-
ber last year.
The case that Fry—who's
been building laneway homes
since Vancouver first allowed
them in 2009 with his com-
pany Smallworks and who's
been a driving advocate at
Small Housing BC—makes is
that the relatively low number
of laneways currently being
DOWN THE LANE
Could laneway homes be the key to
unlocking new housing in Vancouver?
L A N D V A L U E S
BACKYARD
BRAWL
Vancouver city
policies make
laneway homes a
risky gamble for
homeowners
