Despite sending a letter to the province asking for an exception to new guidelines, Saanich council was forced to vote to allow secondary suites to be built in homes in rural Saanich, outside the urban containment boundary.
"We don't see the housing affordability dilemma being solved by chiselling away at the urban containment boundary," Coun. Susan Brice said. She brought the motion to approve the change — which passed on a 7 to 2 vote — but she also took the opportunity to explain the reasons why she didn't actually agree with it.
New provincial regulations require municipalities to change zoning rules and to allow secondary suites in areas formerly just zoned for single-family homes. Saanich councillors were presented with this fact back in May, but voted to send a letter to the province asking for an exception. That was rejected, so the matter came back before council on Monday, June 23.
Councillors decided to act even though they may not support the policy because if they didn't the district could find itself in tricky legal waters should it turn down an application for a secondary suite when provincial rules mandate they should be allowed.
Making the change themselves also allows councillors to have a say in how it is implemented, and allows them to set the definition of secondary suites as narrow as possible to keep in place a prohibition on accessory dwelling units such as detached garden suites.
A group of people showed up to the Monday council meeting (and to the one back in May) to advocate for a relaxation of the rules further, arguing that on rural properties it is just as common, or even more common, to have a detached unit than to have an attached one like a basement suite.
Many councillors seemed firmly opposed to crossing that line, and voted down a motion to have staff look into allowing accessory dwellings.
"What we just adopted was as far as I'm willing to go, personally," Coun. Teale Phelps Bondaroff said.
Brice — as well as many of her fellow councillors — has been generally supportive of new provincial housing policies that come under a collection of policies known as Small Scale Multi-Unit Housing regulations. She called the rural secondary suite requirement an "outlier" in an "otherwise justifiable" bundle of policies.
Mayor Dean Murdock agreed with this sentiment, and was clear he was also against allowing rural secondary suites.
He said at the Monday meeting that the urban containment boundary was designed to constrain growth, and that he thought this policy "opens the door" to development in rural Saanich.
In his letter to Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon, Murdock wrote "An exemption to this requirement will ensure Saanich can continue to protect its rural and farmlands, preserve the rich biodiversity of the Coastal Douglas Fir ecological zone, and focus its growth within the Urban Containment Boundary."
The minister responded by disagreeing with the notion that allowing secondary suites will lead to runaway development.
"Far from resulting in dramatic increases in density, secondary suites are compatible in scale and form within established single-family neighbourhoods," the minister wrote.
Seeking to set himself apart from his colleagues, Coun. Colin Plant was clear he supported allowing secondary suites, pointing out that changing these rules does not mean every homeowner is going to elect to build another unit.
