Victoria’s existing Official Community Plan (OCP) was drafted more than a decade ago – prior to the biggest run-up in rents and home purchase prices in history.
It was adopted years before the COVID pandemic, and the COVID recession. It was years before all federal parties acknowledged the housing shortage, and before federal and provincial policy changes that made it clear that all cities are going to need to allow more homes to be built.
Some of our neighbourhood plans were even older – dating back to 1993. That was before the 2008 financial crash and recession, before 9-11, even before the Y2K scare (remember that?).
And our Zoning Bylaw dates from 1981, the year that IBM launched its first personal computer (image from Wikipedia). Most Victorians alive today had zero opportunity to weigh in on that bylaw.
Indeed, half of today’s population doesn’t even have any recollection of 1981. Why? Because they weren’t born yet.
Over the many years, the zoning bylaw been accreted with spot rezonings so many times that we now have about 900 different zones in the city.
As noted in the Update package, the zoning bylaw contains:
“18 schedules and a complex web of regulations and definitions. With this complexity, zoning is increasingly difficult to administer and navigate and is often an impediment to progressive, sustainable land management. Importantly, zoning does not reflect current or emerging OCP land use policy, resulting in a high volume of rezoning applications which, due to cost, time and uncertainty, result in barriers to realizing policy objectives, including the provision of housing.”
Fortunately, future updates will not languish for so long. Provincial legislation now requires updates be completed this year, and every 5 years moving forward – as it should.