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26 C i t y o f Va n c o u v e r B C B U S I N E S S . C A J U LY/A U G U S T 2 0 24 LANEWAY HOUSE PERMITS ISSUED 2009-2023 KILOMETRES 0 5 the main house is brought up to current building-code stan- dards. That can cost anywhere from $200,000 to $500,000. (I should note here that this is a topic rather close to this writer's heart, after my partner built a laneway house for his daughter and family that we're forced to own jointly, with the attendant perils of that situ- ation, because it's too crazy expensive to reno and stratify.) The math on the two exist- ing options is this: a home- owner who builds a rental laneway will likely only be able to get enough rent to pay the mortgage taken out to cover the construction costs, plus the taxes, utilities and mainte- nance fees. "We considered it [and] an architect advised against unless it's for a family to live in (and mostly pay for). Otherwise, the costs are prohibitive and would be a drain even at [$3,000 per month earned in rent over decades]," wrote one woman who answered my social media call-out on the topic. For the pre-1940s homes where a laneway can be sold, the finances are equally dicey. If it costs $500,000 for the laneway and another $500,000 to bring the main house up to city standards, it's a gamble whether they'll make any profit at all. "You might end up with a net positive of only $150,000," says Suraj Jhuty, the 33-year- old co-owner of Vancouver- based Theorem Developments, which specializes in laneways. "No one is going to take that risk to make $150,000." And it's especially not at- tractive to sell off a backyard for such a minimal return. (In the past, when I've talked to Vancouver planners about this unappealing math, they've emphasized how much profit the homeowner is likely to make and questioned why they shouldn't be required to invest some back. Which is kind of a weird take, since homeowners in the city who are currently selling to tower developers are getting almost double the assessed value of their homes without having to spend a penny on upgrades.) The result is that the majority of the almost-6,000 laneways in Vancouver that are already built or underway are being done by smaller developers like Jhuty, who are undertaking them as part of a complete lot redevelopment, like the one near King Edward and Prince Albert where I visited him one morning. With pre-1940s houses, they essentially remove every- thing except the basic frame of the old house and build a new one around it, along with the new laneway. It's a simula- tion of heritage retention that produces housing that sells at top dollar. With the others, like the site where I meet Jhuty, they demolish the existing house and build a new main house with a basement suite and laneway on the lot—yet anoth- er scenario that further limits home ownership to those who have the financial means to buy that higher-priced, multi- unit development. So it would seem to make sense, if you want to intensify housing in the city and get more out of what is an awful lot of decorative, unused grass, to make some changes that would allow sales, and that might require some essential upgrades to be made in the main house, but not force a complete rebuild. Jhuty says a valuable thing cities could require, if they allow the laneway to be sold, is some kind of upgrade that improves the main house's energy efficiency and sustain- ability—improvements that are reasonably priced and a ben- efit for the owner and the city as a whole but not so expen- sive that they kill the project. He has never understood the current policy, where the city says a main house has to be fully upgraded for safety reasons (if the laneway is go- ing to be sold), but that same urgency around safety doesn't seem to apply to a laneway that is rented. But, as I discovered when trying to figure out how feasible this might be, it's a fraught topic. PATCHWORK SOLUTION Relaxing current rules around the building and selling of laneway homes could lead to more available housing

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