WHEREAS British Columbia Building Code Standards only allow accessible building standards to be applied on multi-family housing and cannot be applied to single family dwellings or townhouse development; AND WHEREAS there is a severe shortage of all housing types that are accessible: THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Local Government Act andor Community Charter be changed and provide policy for local governments to apply tax incentives, development cost proportional forgiveness, density bonusing or other tools to encourage construction of accessible housing in all housing forms.
Ministry of Community, Sport Cultural Development There are a number of avenues that a local government can currently pursue to encourage the development of adaptable housing. As an example, the District of Saanich and the District of North Vancouver both have policies encouraging builders to adopt voluntary guidelines for single family and townhouse development. A local government could take this one step further through community planning processes and zoning bylaws, or using tools such as density bonusing or comprehensive development agreements to encourage the development of more adaptable single family housing. Under the Community Charter, local governments need approval from the provincial government to adopt new or amended bylaws that establish standards which vary from the Building Code. The goal in the Province is to have generally standardized guidelines for building standards across the province. Any changes to local government development finance best practices, policy or legislation is developed in consultation with the Development Finance Review Committee DFRC chaired by the Ministry. DFRC meets regularly and includes representatives from local governments, UBCM and the development community. The Province encourages UBCM to table this issue at future meetings for discussion.