Want a fourplex next to your Kelowna house? You may not have a choice
The City of Kelowna is looking at greatly expanding the areas of the city where fourplexes can be built with no input from neighbours.
Right now, 90% of the land needed to accommodate Kelowna’s growth over the next 20 years is zoned for single-family housing.
While much of that allows for suites or carriage houses, to build more than one additional unit requires a costly and time-consuming rezoning process, council was told by staff today, June 20.
The one exception is the area between Clement Avenue and KLO Road, bounded by Richter Street and Gordon Drive. Some of that area is zoned RU7, which means fourplexes can be built by only getting development permits and building permits.
In the last five years, that’s resulted in 167 redevelopments of single-family lots and the creation of more than 650 housing units.
By contrast, there have only been 23 rezoning applications for similar developments outside those areas in the past 12 years, which shows the need for change, staff said.
Converting single-family lots into buildings with up to four units, all of which will have ground entrances, not only gets more people living in the core areas of the city but also contributes to more attainable housing prices.
READ MORE: Is Kelowna running out of room to grow?
This was not billed as affordable housing, which is usually run by non-profit organizations and tied to income.
Instead, it’s making housing more attainable than expensive single-family houses, staff said. But, they will also look at ways to make one unit per fourplex affordable.
More study is needed to see if services like roads, sewers and drainage can accommodate the increased density in all areas of the city but the intent is to “start big.”
The plan is to have the new rules in place by the spring or summer of 2023, with opportunity for public input along the way.
“I’m really glad to see this coming forward because this is really putting into action everything that we’ve been talking about all term – to make it easier and more streamlined to get housing in the core areas where we’ve said we needed it,” Mayor Colin Basran said at the end of the presentation.
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