Sechelt council voted Nov. 4 to approve a development permit, with variances, for the Lions housing project at Greenecourt but the non-profit group will not get a full waiver of development cost charges (DCC).
Council has already authorized the waiver of $730,657 in DCCs for the 73 units that will be fully subsidized or charge rent geared to income.
The remaining 31 units in the development will be affordable market rentals, which the DCC bylaw does not allow waivers for, even if the developer is a non-profit.
The DCCs owing for those units would be $310,279 and if they’re waived the district would collect no DCCs at all for the project.
Based on an earlier council motion, planning staff asked for approval to draft an amendment to the DCC bylaw to give a full DCC waiver to all not-for-profit housing developments that include units designated as “deep subsidy” and rent geared to income. A further amendment would allow a waiver for a maximum of 30 per cent of the units in a project that has “moderate income [and] affordable market rents.”
The first two recommendations passed easily, but Coun. Tom Lamb said he was concerned about the loss of potential funding through the sewer portion of the DCCs if affordable market rent units were included in the waiver.
“We have a limited capacity and there’s only so many people in the community that pay for the Water Resource Centre, and that complex is something that benefits a whole community,” Lamb said. “If we had 200 or 300 of these units being built, they would use up a lot of capacity and probably put us to the point where we’d have to expand the plant, and they would be contributing nothing to that.”
Coun. Eric Scott took a similar position. “Infrastructure needs funding and it can’t be borne by the rest of the taxpayers,” he said.
Coun. Brenda Rowe said for her it wasn’t a question of a loss of DCCs but of making an investment in the community. “I feel like this is an investment for us and if it can help attract more, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s something that this community sorely, sorely needs.”
Mayor Darnelda Siegers said she too thought waiving DCCs should be seen as an investment and a signal to the province. “This [project] is an investment that BC Housing, the province, has made in our community, and I think by waiving the DCCs we are showing our support of them coming and putting money in our community.”
A motion against drafting an amendment for DCC waivers on affordable market rent units passed with Rowe and Siegers opposed.
