Oak Bay has released the results from public consultation on secondary suites in the municipality. Mayor Kevin Murdoch joins to share those results and tell us what happens next.
Oak Bay has released the results from public consultation on secondary suites in the municipality. Mayor Kevin Murdoch joins to share those results and tell us what happens next.
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Disclaimer: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Jackie: Hi, my name is Jackie Lamport. Today is Monday, August 16. Welcome to the Capital Daily Podcast. Today on the show, In June, Oak Bay council asked residents to participate in a survey to help decide the future of secondary suites in the municipality. Now, those results are public. For Municipal Monday, we speak to Oak Bay Mayor Kevin Murdoch about what they found and what happens next.
Mayor Murdoch, welcome back to the show.
Mayor Murdoch: Thank you very much for having me here.
Jackie: Let's first talk about the ongoing process with the secondary suites in Oak Bay. Can you explain how the survey came about and what its purpose is?
Mayor Murdoch: Yeah, this should be put into the context of the housing framework. We're moving towards a review of all of our housing. So we have, in this term, looked at all of our infill housing options. That's everything from townhouses, duplexes, triplexes, anything that's infill, and secondary suites are a part of that. But it's also separate because this process started at the end of the last council term to do a more in-depth look at secondary suites. So we've been tackling this from the perspective of the OCP, recognizing this is a viable housing model. We're not looking at this as should we do it; rather, how would we go about implementing it, and we're trying to do it within the framework of those other housing options.
So what we've done is we've done two separate inputs. One was more of the broader set of questions to the community. Based on that feedback and feedback from the council, we've narrowed it down and codified it into some areas. We're looking at now when we do the implementation, how do we successfully do the implementation, I guess, is probably the best way of putting it. And so that's where we're at, and the community feedback has been quite quick. It's quite helpful on that front. So we've had this report, the survey and the surveys come to council, and we provided our feedback as a council. And that's going to go away and come back with some options for us in the fall.
Jackie: Did you get the engagement that you were hoping for?
Mayor Murdoch: It was a high level of engagement. That being said, you never get everybody. We've created a municipal site, a single source. So it's called connectedoakbay.ca, and we're doing all of our engagement through that platform for the electronics. And then, of course, we do as much as we can out in the community as well.
Jackie: This survey is from June, but the results are now becoming visible to the public. Does that mean that the council did have some time to digest them?
Mayor Murdoch: So the survey results came back to council at the end of July; I think that our meeting was for us, and we were able to provide our feedback on that. So the council's feedback is tied to the feedback from the public. If people are looking at that survey, I think that's a second or third page; there's a little summary of the breakdown. You'll see how we should methodically go through and look at the different aspects. I think it's really helpful to understand, like most places that have legalized secondary suites, I mean, they exist currently in Oak Bay; there are hundreds of them. They typically are left alone unless there's a nuisance-type complaint. But it doesn't address a lot of the community's concerns in terms of the health and safety of those tenants. They don't follow the tenancy act, they, there's all kinds of stuff and celebrate pieces, and some people don't feel comfortable having a suite if they're not official and legal.
I think we have to when we're bringing this forward, we don't want to be in a position where we're closing down a bunch of sweets in there in that process because they're not meeting health and safety or building code. And so a lot of those nuances, how do we create a bridge basically, from where we are a fully regulated model that incentivizes people to come forward, but also allows for a sort of a more regulated and procedural piece in the backend. So it's not simple, because if you've ever had any history of this, most places end up with about 10% of their suites officially registered and about 90% unregistered even after a legalization process.
Jackie: I was going to ask, so those suites that are currently operating technically illegally. Would they be able to come forward and then go ahead as legal suites?
Mayor Murdoch: Yeah, that's the model that we're trying to get to, and I would hesitate to use the term illegal because it's a very gray line. It's totally legal to have borders and Oak Bay, so you can allow it to have people living with you. So it's an artificial delineation. If you have a sealed-off or a separate full kitchen, we would consider that to be a suite. But you can have the same number of people living there legally, without that. So it's, it's a gray area right now. Part of this is to clean that up a little bit so that everyone understands the rules and moves forward on that front.
Jackie: Okay, let's talk briefly about the different scenarios that were given for people to give their input on. What were those scenarios?
Mayor Murdoch: Yeah, I think it's page four of the report. You can google Oak Bay secondary suite study, and it pops up in a couple of places. But we looked at the suite type and existing land use versus new land use. What is the minimum lot size? Should we do it at a minimum or maximum unit size? Should owner-occupancy be required? Should the dwelling use include borders and secondary suites, or should those be separated? Should there be additional parking required? And if so, what would that look like? What kind of enforcement model are we interested in? Is it going to be complaint-based or more proactive? We're going to what level of building code? There's a health and safety building code, and there's full building code compliance. There are registration models in terms of everything from fully from no renewal registration to voluntary registration to mandatory registration. They all play off each other, I would say, so you can't sort of treat them in isolation, and you have to look at them in the context of the whole because you do one thing here, and it pulls over here. So, that's the nuance that we're looking at as to how we're going to implement it in a way that makes sense.
Within that sort of broader framework, I always try to make the caveat to everybody. This is not going to change the housing in Oak Bay dramatically in the short term; it just can't. Most people who have suites that want them currently have them, as you're not going to see a massive influx. And we're trying very hard not to do anything that would dramatically impact people who do it that do have them, that would cause them to lose their tenants. If it's a health and safety thing, we need a bridge. I think you'll see a lot more benefit from some of the other housing options that we're looking at in terms of allowing some infill pieces, but this is certainly one piece of the puzzle.
The other thing that I think we have to be cautious about is, the more you regulate and codify things into a set of building codes, the more expensive they get. And so what we have right now is a lot of very inexpensive secondary suites that are in the $600 to $1,000 range. As soon as people are purpose building suites, that are two-bedroom suites, they're suddenly $2,000 a month, and that's a very big gap that we don't want to be moving people out of low-cost housing and creating a much higher cost marketing housing market. But it's okay to have both, but we don't want to lose the one to get the other. Those are the nuances that we're going to have to struggle with as a council.
Jackie: So the scenarios, to my understanding, is there's four, and then there are different levels of regulation that people were voting on?
Mayor Murdoch: It's a bit of a simplified Q&A. We broke all of those down into four possible scenarios that we have to choose from. One of those scenarios was to give examples like if we did more of a low touch model that would look like this. We did a high-touch model that would look like this and a couple in between. But everything is so subtle. If you insist on parking, what does that look like? Does that mean you're now losing green space that people also see value in? It's easy in isolation to say, "Oh, yeah, people should provide all the parking there." However, that's not practical a lot of the time. And so those are where we have to deal with the nuances.
Jackie: Let's talk about the results of it. Did it seem that people were in favour of maybe less regulation?
Mayor Murdoch: It was a bit spread out. I think most people were, in my interpretation, most in favour of less regulation. However, they would like secondary suites to pay enough money to cover auxiliary costs, impacts on infrastructure, etc. So it's interesting because those are not necessarily aligned. And if you have a little break in this area, you are often saying, "Just go to it. We'll leave you alone if you leave us alone." If you want to get money out of that or have more health and safety control, you inevitably end up in a higher regulatory piece. So I think both of those are true people who wanted the higher regulatory lower touch kind of model, which is tricky to get to.
Jackie: Something else that stuck out to me was that it seemed that a majority of people were on board with secondary suites, continuing with some level of low regulation. But then it also showed that 59% of people voted against a pilot program. Why do you think that is?
Mayor Murdoch: Yeah, mostly because people don't want to do a pilot. In our Official Community Plan, we recognize that suites are a viable housing option, one of many, and they should be regulated better than they are currently. So we're looking at this from, "How do we implement that?" So we had the same conversation at the council table; we had, I think, six people who were like, "Yes." One suggested they were in favour of doing a pilot, but the majority opinion that'll give us options was, "No, there's no point in us doing a couple of years in one small section of Oak Bay. We're better off applying the rule evenly and going forward with it." I think we've learned enough from other jurisdictions not to go through a pilot process. The flip side of that might be to take a slightly more cautious approach to start and open it up a bit. That would be another option that we have available to us.
Jackie: All in all, it would be a little bit of a faster process than if you were to go through a pilot.
Mayor Murdoch: Yeah, quite a bit faster. It's often easy to forget how long it takes to get changes in housing. We have a fully built community, and the last lot was built in 1962. Most of the houses and buildings are still well within their usable lifespan. So there are houses torn down and replaced, but there's not a huge amount of development. Things don't change quickly, so you're trying to create a framework that allows for when change happens, you're seeing the building type you want to see built. A pilot project in that framework, we're losing somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10 to 20 houses a year, something of that nature, through demolition. So you'd have to sort of wait for those to go through their building cycle and have suites built into them. How do you do a pilot in that model? it just isn't that practical. So let's find a framework, implement it, and we'll monitor it and see how it goes.
The hardest part here, frankly, is going to get the people who need health and safety issues addressed are the ones that are the hardest to get to come forward. People who haven't invested in their house to make it safe for years probably aren't going to do it easily now. So we have to find some bridge to allow the existing ones to come forward in a way that allows those health and safety issues to be dealt with. I think we do have an obligation. Certainly, our fire and police would like to know if there are two separate building units in the building. They might go into the front door, think they got everybody out, not realizing that there are people still in the basement. So those are pretty serious pieces that we would like to address as much as possible.
Jackie: So say, this does all go through. The secondary suites are legal, and there are lots of frameworks around how they can exist. Would that make it so you would crack down perhaps on the suites that still are not operating under the bylaws?
Mayor Murdoch: council can decide anything they want, but that's not the feeling I have from council. I think the entire conversation to this point has been, How do we implement this in a way that encourages existing suites to come forward?" And certainly, there are different approaches, and we're going to have to provide some incentives for people. So that might be time limits, so there are no charges or enforcement for five years while we go through that and allow people to come up to speed. I think health and safety is a trickier one because we can't be seen in a position where we're instead of allowing unsafe living places to exist, then we would be liable if something bad happened. So I think that's trickier, and it's separated between those existing and those that will have a path forward. Anything new would be pretty straightforward because you can say, "Okay, if you're going to put a suite in, it has to meet the building code and meet those standards." So it's really any retrofits of existing buildings that are more tricky.
Jackie: So what happens next?
Mayor Murdoch: The feedback from that came to council, we've now given our direction to the consultants to give some structure to their options that they're going to bring back to us. We had some questions that weren't readily answerable, a little bit more nuanced and complex. So they're going to come back with those answers. And we'll look at it again, this fall, probably in September. All things being equal, I think our hope is that we'll be able to move it off into bylaw changes this fall as well. This has all been pushed back a little bit by COVID. Some of that consultation and things got pushed because we also have this whole housing framework piece that's just coming in the fall, which is a much bigger discussion around everything else. So this might end up getting rolled into that a little bit but it's a separate issue.
I like reminding people, who are hoping this will solve the housing crisis, it will not, and it's one piece of the puzzle. We're really going to make a difference in Oak Bay by opening up and providing the housing that we need inside the community to get built. We list a bunch of things that are possible in our OCP, but we don't give any direction as to what that looks like. So nothing's getting built because nobody wants to wait three years for a rezoning and never know the outcome. So we're trying to give some certainty around all of those options so people know what can and can't be built. I think that's going to have a bigger impact on achieving some of those goals for the community.
Jackie: Mayor Murdoch, thank you so much again.
Mayor Murdoch: It's my pleasure, Jackie. Take care.
Jackie: You too.
If you want to help support Capital Daily's local journalism and connect your business with our engaged and curious Greater Victoria audience of over 50,000, email our partnerships team at advertising at capitaldaily.ca. Thanks so much for joining us today. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a rating and review and also subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes going forward. We post new shows every Monday to Friday. My name is Jackie Lamport. This is the Capital Daily Podcast. We'll talk to you tomorrow.