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City gives green light to secondary suites in duplexes In a 5-2 vote Monday, the City of North Vancouver approved the mortgage helper suites for semidetached home owners TODD COYNE S Ta f f R e p O RT e R
E
xactly 20 years after becoming the first B.C. municipality to allow secondary suites in single-family homes, the City of North Vancouver has posted another provincial housing first. On Monday city council voted to legalize secondary suites in the city’s 471 duplex buildings, in a
move that effectively renders each building a potential legal triplex or fourplex. The decision also affects 200 additional properties already zoned for duplex use but which nonetheless contain either a single-family home or no structure at all. Most of the city’s duplexes are located in the historic Moodyville neighbourhood along East First and East Second streets. But the city’s decision will likely have much wider implications for the entire province. Under the current B.C. Building Code, only detached homes with a single dwelling unit can have a secondary suite, which excludes not just duplexes but townhouses and condos, as well. But a recent statement from B.C.Housing
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Minister Rich Coleman’s office to The Outlook confirmed that the province is closely watching how North Vancouver handles secondary duplex suites and may relax the B.C.-wide building code ban on the units accordingly. For a few city staff and councillors, it’s like 1993 all over again. That’s when the city became the first B.C. municipality to allow secondary suites in single-family homes, a lead which the provincial building code eventually followed some years later. “I was at the table when secondary suites were permitted in single-family homes and I’m hearing a lot of the same arguments with respect to duplexes,” Coun. Rod Clark said. “People were very desperate. They continued, NEXT PAGE
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were desperate to keep the accommodation they’d had for some time, which was affordable to them, which they’d come to enjoy and get to know their neighbours and become part of the community and they were threatened.” Threatened, Clark said, by arguments similar to those of fellow councillors Don Bell and Pam Bookham, whose opposition to Monday’s bylaw amendment was grounded in the opinion that all secondary duplex suites should be inspected and approved by city staff before being deemed livable. But the four remaining councillors and Mayor Darrell Mussatto sided with city staff ’s recommendation that while all secondary duplex suites must comply with provincial and municipal safety codes and the main suite must technically be owner-occupied, any enforcement and inspections would only be done on a complaint basis.
ary duplex suites, without which, he That’s how the city said, the city would have a worsening handles inspections affordable housing crisis. of single-family home “Ninety per cent of the suites in suites and that’s how it single-family homes have not been should handle inspecinspected,” Mussatto said. “I think if tions of secondary suites we’re going to start somewhere, we’d in semi-detached homes, start there and then we would open Coun. Craig Keating the floodgates to having huge chalargued. lenges of housing in our city. “I would need a report “We don’t need suite police in the from staff that says City of North Vancouver,” he added. that, in their experience, Darrell Mussatto Rod Clark In addition to mandatory owner violations of living stanoccupancy of the main duplex area, dards in this particular kind of housing — duplex secondary suites — has the amendment also stipulates that secondary duplex suites cannot be larger than 969 square in their experience shown itself to be more egrefeet and must be accompanied by one additiongious than any other kind of housing, and I don’t al parking space. think that evidence is before us.” tcoyne@northshoreoutlook.com Mayor Mussatto agreed, noting that in his twitter.com/toddcoyne 20-year career as a paramedic before being elected to council, he saw countless illegal second-
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For those who do not know or have not met me, I was a professional tennis player for 12 years on the ATP TOUR and competed in all major tennis tournaments around the globe, including a few Wimbledon doubles finals. I finished the 1995 circuit ranked #1 in the world in doubles. I bring up my tennis career because there is a municipally owned tennis facility that bears my name in North Vancouver, which at times confuses those who aren’t aware that I’m now a full-time REALTOR®, a career I have been enjoying for nearly 10 years. I bring to real estate the traits that made me successful in my sport: a competitive spirit, quest for excellence and a hard-driven work ethic. Without a doubt, real estate is the ideal job ❝ Sometimes you meet people for my personality who you instantly trust and because it is a resultsknow they have your best driven industry, and quite simply, the harder interest at heart. you work the more Grant is one of those guys…❞ success you achieve for – Brenda Shakey. your clients.
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