Whitehorse citizens will soon be able to give council their views on a planned rewrite of the city’s zoning bylaw that would allow for denser building across more of the city.
According to information shared in a March 14 briefing held by the city prior to the public hearing on the bylaw rewrite, the five key bylaw changes are: allowing the building of four units per lot, likely to take the form of fourplexes and duplexes with legal basement suites, across all of the city’s urban “single detached” residential zones; relaxing some rules around site coverage and setbacks in some zones where the additional units are to be allowed; allowing the construction of garden suites in more places; allowing more units to be built in some of the denser zones and relaxing some parking regulations.
The public hearing on the bylaw is set for March 25.
Also shared were the results of public engagement about the bylaw that the city conducted in Dec. 2023. The results showed strong support for more units per lot, additional housing forms, increased allowable site coverage if it provides more dwelling units, and additional suites in any of the city’s residential zones.
Darcy McCord, one of the city’s senior planners who has worked on the bylaw rewrite, said that work on zoning bylaws would continue through the year, but that council wanted to get bylaws in place enabling more housing development sooner. He said the proposed bylaw changes come from recommendations by the city’s housing and land development advisory committee; the bylaw changes that council will be deciding on are the recommended adjustments that the city administration felt it had enough information to move forward with.
Apartment housing and other denser multi-family options remain important and there are some developers with the capacity to build larger buildings. He said these rules could allow developers who usually work on single-family houses to build multi-unit buildings without deviating from the lot sizes, setbacks and building height requirements that they’re familiar with.
McCord said the city looked at zoning changes being undertaken in other jurisdictions, noting New Zealand had been a leader in this regard and claimed impressive results. He said elsewhere in Canada, similar zoning schemes to the one Whitehorse is considering are in their early days of implementation.
He stressed that the city also wants to hear from people via the Engage Whitehorse web page in the days leading up to the public hearing. The website also has a detailed guide to each of the proposed changes.
A draft bylaw has already gone out to council and been given first reading. Following the public hearing, council will make a decision on whether the bylaw rewrite will proceed on April 22.
Contact Jim Elliot at jim.elliot@yukon-news.com