Chapter 6 - We have a shortage of apartments, so people are just turning single family homes into apartments

Aka: Why you need to support as many new apartments in Multi-Family Zones as we could possibly build, and they should be built as soon as we can

The premise:

All the restrictive zoning holding back Apartments in Urban areas is:

Driving up the cost of single-family homes
Turning single family homes into illegal apartment buildings
The demographic of people in homes has changed dramatically in 50 years, as have lifestyles
Lowering the quality of life for those who lack the privilege of choice in housing
Creating the traffic and parking issues that NIMBYs hate about apartments
Reducing the effectiveness of our transit system
"People don't want to live in Apartments"

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This is Chapter 6 to an series of articles about housing affordability, infill and urban development. If you are interested in the topic the past subjects are listed below:

Chapter 1: How Infill lowers property taxes
Chapert 2: How Suburban Development and Strip Malls kill Local Business
Chapter 3: How NIMBYism creates pot holes - and why the burbs get all the nice stuff
Chapter 4: Why Housing Affordability Depends On Infill and Density Increases
Chapter 5.1: Case Study on Small Lot Commercial Infill
Chapter 5.2 Case Study on Normal Tranquille Infill Lot

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All the restrictive zoning holding back Apartments in Urban areas is driving up the cost of single-family homes.

How are we restricting new apartment buildings? Through a ton of regulation in the Zoning Bylaws - related to landscaping, parking, height limits, etc. which can be explored more fully in the Case Studies in Part 3. How is restricting apartment construction in Urban Areas making Single Family Homes more expensive?

First of all, let us accept that a certain fixed population needs homes/shelter, there is roughly 90,000 people in Kamloops, and those folks need places to live. Who are these people? They can be retirees, young people in university, young families, families with teenagers, single parents, divorcees, multi-generational households. - all kinds of people, with all kinds of different needs and wants. This is important, as we have an unconscious tendency to imagine that all homes are for dual-income, middle class, families with 1-3 kids. As well, there is still more people who might be planning, or desiring a move to Kamloops - who have a job offer, or might prefer TRU and its programs to another's, or like the weather and lifestyle as a retirement destination. These folks are also looking for places to live in Kamloops, and will be competing with their dollars to put a roof over their heads. Importantly, many, if not most, of these people are not middle class, dual income families with kids.

Now what sorts of people might want to live in an Apartment? In many cases, many retirees would. Level access via elevators, property managers to take care of routine maintenance, turnkey access facilitating extended travel. Students as well might like to live in Apartments, and other young people headed out on their own for the first time - young adults who spend most of their limited pocket books at the pub, liquor store and with friends. More young families are even choosing walkable, urban places to raise their kids in - preferring a place where their kids can be more independent and transport themselves to activities rather than needing parents to drive them for every trip. So many people might want to choose to live in an apartment, at least for some parts of their lives.

Also importantly, many people do not have the luxury of choosing where they live - they simply have to access the most affordable housing they can find. Single parents, students, young adults, folks down on their luck. All of these people are going to access the cheapest rent they can.

Currently - that cheapest rent is in sharing a house.

Batch - 5 bedrooms advertised - $590 per bedroom

The most cost effective place for people competing for the least expensive shelter is to rent a house and pay rent for each bedroom. This happens in every neighbourhood and in fact the more 'sub-urban' and far from the center, the cheaper this gets. For this reason, it is not uncommon now for large homes at the top of Aberdeen, Pineview or new Batch to have 6+ people sharing a house. Rent on a whole house like this is typically about $2-3000 - so split even just four ways, $500-750 each is actually quite affordable.

3 Bedroom Townhome - $586 per bedroom

But if you think about the living situation, you are talking about 4-6+ people likely sharing 1-2 bathrooms, 1 kitchen and common living space. The actual private space for each house occupant is usually under 100 Sq. Ft. in their own bedroom - which might have one small window, and may or may not lock. In comparison to this situation, an apartment all to yourself - with your own toilet, own shower, and your own kitchen seems luxurious. Even in the case of a micro suite - 350 Sq. Ft. having a door that locks, with a bathroom and kitchen that is all your own can be pretty alluring. Imagine the luxury of returning home knowing that the toilet you cleaned in the morning is still clean. So when folks say "people don't want to live in a box in the sky" remember, for many people, that box in the sky could be a much more desirable situation for them. Only it is completely unaffordable.

1970s walk up 1 bedroom apartment on Tranquille - $1550 per bedroom

This group living, bedroom-in-a-house-turned-apartment situation comes with some other major drawbacks for folks on the bottom rung of the shelter ladder. It lacks a serious amount of security. As is common with folks in this situation. Relationships are constantly changing, as are jobs and opportunities, and so people move around alot. Moving is expensive, time consuming, and makes putting down roots just that much harder. For people who do not have access to cars, either due to price, ability or preference, they often have to move jobs when they loose their living situation - furthering job insecurity. Having a place of their own, not subjects to the changing tides of their roommates is huge - even if its just for a few years of school.

As well, often only one of the tenants will be named on a lease with the landlord, meaning that when people come and go from the house, trying to manage damage deposits without contracts is a mess. As the landlord, trying to recoup damage is impossible. If too many people leave the house at once, it can leave who is left with a rent payment they cannot afford.

The day-to-day house jobs are typically a mess when trying to equitably share accountability for chores that houses need, like lawn mowing, garden watering, general maintenance, common area cleaning, washing the siding, shoveling the driveway, etc. If the living situation becomes uncomfortable for someone due to personality disagreements or toxic relationships, people can be stuck living in this nightmare for a myriad of reasons, or be stuck trying to find a lateral move to rent a room in another shared space with strangers that could be just as toxic. Can you imagine moving cities as a young female and the only housing option available to you is a shared house without locking doors with men you do not know?

These are all people for whom their own studio apartment is a gigantic improvement on their own living situation right now. But that studio apartment is hugely unaffordable, mostly due to expensive restrictive zoning rules combined with a limited supply. As we saw in Case Study 3.2, simply relaxing parking requirements can deliver 2-3 Bedroom, 1100 Sq. Ft. apartments for ~$2000-2200/month without a parking stall, but otherwise conforming to all aspects of building and zoning. If you use the same lot, with exactly the same parking variance, you can deliver Micro Suites for rent, at $659/month. Not as cheap as $500 per month, but getting pretty close, with your own private kitchen, and own private bathroom.

Interestingly these unmanaged, informal, shared house renting situations are similar to the managed boarding houses common at the turn of last century, where young people would rent a room, often with a shared bathroom, for inexpensive rents. Only in those situations the buildings were typically owned by a live-in landlord or who often prepared meals for the occupants, and performed common maintenance jobs like mowing the lawn and cleaning the common areas. Unlike our current reality of single family homes in the suburbs, with a revolving door of tenants, and no one on the hook for maintenance and good neighbourliness - boarding houses had service and consistent management. Not necessarily good management - but at least a goto person in an otherwise transient shelter.

In the 1980s we made this type of living situation illegal - and what we have got instead is folks who would otherwise be fantastically happy with a boarding house, or budget apartment scenario, instead are getting lower quality housing, in an unmanaged way in buildings and neighbourhoods who expressly do not want apartments in their back yards. Phrased another way - instead of getting apartments in their backyards, NIMBYs are getting transient, poorly maintained, house share situations instead. Another irony, is that we made those boarding house situations illegal, because we deemed that culturally, the quality of that situation was too low as to be allowed, but what we have now, is undoubtedly much lower for many folks.

turn of last century boarding house and its occupants, now torn down for surface parking

Thought of another way, with shared kitchens, or shared bathrooms, managed like rooming houses, conceivably even with management, we could be delivering rental accommodation to young students at market rates below what they are paying for shared single family homes right now. In fact, owning a situation like this would be a great middle-class investment and job for the right sort of person.

Ironically, we actually do have alot of boarding houses in Kamloops, and they get huge regulatory relief, and don't follow normal zoning rules - we call them Seniors Homes. If you are young and want to live in this type of situation it is illegal, but if you are 75+, its called retirement.

an example of rental housing on Dominion Street, in an otherwise single family neighbourhood,
which often has a landlord suite on the top floor

And if you want an affordable single family home, that sucks - because all those folks who would greatly benefit from living in apartments, by grouping their money together, can outbid you and your family for that single family home.

Six people each contributing $500/month can out bid your families budget of maybe $2000, and thus the price to rent a home keeps climbing. Put some couples in some of the bedrooms, or a couple bunk beds, which has been covered as common in local newspapers, and suddenly students and young people are paying $3500 for a family home, with each only contributing a few hundred bucks a month.

So far we have talked mostly about young people taking up homes that are 'intended' for single families. What about the retired seniors who have a cushy 2500-3500 Sq. Ft. large house, all to themselves. 5 empty bedrooms, 3 bedrooms, multiple family rooms, with a large yard, with only 1 or 2 occupants. For that demographic it is common to hear that they would like to live in an apartment, but that there is no apartments available at the same finish, amenity and luxury quality that they would like. They have the money: they are living mortgage free in $750,000+ houses - but apartments, in Urban environments that they would consider a reasonable exchange just aren't on the market in Kamloops.

Interestingly, this is where the most success in the condo market of Kelowna has succeeded. So too in Coquitlam, North Van, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton and other walkable urban areas favoured by retirees. Of course they don't come with their detractors, but why are they not on the market in Kamloops? When people say we need families for housing - every luxury condo you stop from being built for a retiree - is a home they are out bidding you for instead.

Often it is once again restrictive zoning - things like tying parking stalls to bedrooms. That 4 bedroom apartment that would be a reasonable exchange for a 60 something retiree in the $800,000 budget:

that apartment would need to provide 3-4+ parking stalls. At $100,000 each in an underground situation, half the $800k budget is sunk into the parking, for an apartment that likely would have been a 1 or 2 car retired household. Similarly, in order to overcome the higher construction costs of concrete ($300+/Sq.Ft. compared to ~$190/Sq. Ft. for Wood Frame), you need to get some height, and in Kamloops that is currently limited to just 6 stories on Tranquille, 8 stories on 12 blocks of downtown, and 3 everywhere else.

Yet by not building more luxury towers like they have in Kelowna for example, those retirees who might like to live in a condo that can be simply locked when they travel, they stay in their 5 bedroom homes. Again, as you can see from these budgets, these people can and do outbid you for that house for your family, even if they are single people. If you max out at $500,000 - they can easily up you to $600,000, and they are paying cash. No financing clause needed.

luxury retiree apartments in Kelowna - folks who would otherwise be outbidding you on a single family home

So a summary point here - between people at the highest and lowest budgets for housing, many of whom would benefit from apartment living for a number of reasons, are instead in the Single Family Home market. Despite not being families, in the having children at home sense or being related sense; These people, through pooling resources, or having a lifetime of savings behind them, can outbid families for these homes, driving up the prices.

Demographics have changed, nationally, and especially locally. BC is for the 'newly wed and the nearly dead'. The young people and the retirees are the primary folks looking to buy and rent homes here. Young people themselves are having fewer kids and having them later, a trend prevalent and increasing since the 80s. Most people looking for shelter are not middle class families with dual incomes and 1-3 kids like we imagine them being. Most people have a diversity of housing needs, at different times in their life. By artificially constraining the size of apartment buildings, while also confining where you can build one to less than 3% of the land area of the city, while further applying zoning rules that make most of those 3% of lots unviable to build on - we are making one type of house for people to bid on.

If you consider yourself to be an advocate for creating affordable single family homes or you yourself want to be able to afford a single family home - you need to also be promoting the pulling back of restrictive zoning measures which prevent apartment buildings from getting built.

One final thought - as it related to traffic and parking, 2 of the biggest NIMBY issues - when 6 young people co-habitate in a house in the burbs, which has no realistic alternative transit opportunities, they all drive. The required 4 parking stalls per house simply aren't enough. Those same people, living in apartments in urban areas, would have much better and more reliable to all sorts of alternative transportation means. They would not necessarily each have a vehicle - and certainly would actually be near enough to work, school and/or amenities that their car journeys would be much less frequent, and perhaps not needed at all. This would lower traffic.

The proof in the pudding here - check out any residential street in downtown Vancouver or New York City, with apartments 20+ stories high on each side. These, the most densest of apartments in the world, have quiet streets with very little car traffic. Every resident of those downtowns is one less person who is driving and parking in your suburban area. Even the North Shore, which is roughly 4-7 times more dense than Aberdeen, has much quieter residential streets, especially in peak hours. This is well supported by data, young people are not getting drivers licenses until they absolutely have to - so given the option to not, they likely won't. If this is news to you, just google it.

If you want a quiet residential single family neighbourhood for yourself, you also need to be a proponent of dense, walkable, urban centers filled with apartments for all the sorts of people who would benefit from them but are prevented from them due to restrictive zoning.

To make infill apartment buildings possible, the following zoning changes are necessary in existing multi-family, mixed use zones:

Remove Parking Minimums
Relax Landscaping Requirements - require street trees and call it a day
Eliminate requirements for shared building amenities
Eliminate Height Limits
Eliminate FARs and Lot Coverage Maximums and Setbacks
Eliminate most use restrictions
Eliminate minimum lot sizes

And as I discussed in Part 2 - Adding Density in Infill Areas - variations on the single family house are also possible at a lower price point by relaxing these same restrictions in those areas to build 2/4/6/8 plexes and row housing into residential areas by dividing the land cost through multiple doors, but keeping yards and front doors for houses with some attached walls.

Compare Tranquille and Victoria Street to Ithaca, NY - hours from major centers in rural upstate, a small college city of 105,000, similar to Kamloops in many ways. They importantly did not make boarding houses illegal, did not knock down most of the apartment buildings in the 1970s for parking, and continue to invest in apartments of all types through much laxer zoning. They have a large pedestrianized downtown, do not suffer from a housing affordability crises, and their students are having no trouble finding homes. So too are retirees, interested in the picturesque Finger Lakes wine country, have no problem finding their luxury condos on the lake. Do they have other local housing issues, of course. Ithaca is no utopia, but their circumstances are very similar to that of Kamloops, and their solutions have been wildly more successful.