Congrats on the approval! Although you might set a world record for lowest-risk building to have a pressurized stairway. I doubt there is a single three-story, small residential building in the world with one.

bsky.app/profile/ryan...

I like to point to the cmhc’s standard building plans for a sixplex in B.C. They designed an absolutely crazy split stair where half is in the building and half is out. It’s like their architect ran into that code requirement after designing the building, and went WTF is this and then just split it.

Part 9 is for carriage houses up to 3 storey townhouses and apartments. These buildings still require two staircases. It’s a nutty requirement, particularly since the code allows single stairs if you provide each three storey building with its own front door that’s a maximum of 5 feet off grade.

There are two parts of the building code that regulate residential buildings in B.C.

Part 3 regulated anything four storeys or above and really large three or less storey buildings. The province allowed single stair egress in these buildings with a bunch of extra requirements.

Why the province hasn’t yet acted to legalize these smaller, safer buildings again — after allowing single stair egress in six storey buildings — is so confusing.

I don’t think they understand the capacity that small developers have to get buildings like these built more quickly.

The silliest part is that the bc building code still requires two staircases for these easy to evacuate, fire compartmentalizedbuildings.

Fire compartmentalized meaning a fire would take at least 1-2 hours to spread out of the suite of origin w/ fire alarms going off waking up the neighbourhood.

I mean how awesome is this. It’s just not possible with our existing built form, lot sizes and ownership rights (and layered costs and other city policy requirements)…

citychangers.org/barcelona-su...

So instead of addressing the housing crisis with cool infill projects like I think our project presents, we’ll get very few and very expensive projects.

To be fair, their concept is based on a Barcelona and Paris super block ideal, which has preserved a shared corridor between properties in a small number of full blocks in those cities. The concept is beautiful, but unacheivable with land ownership in Victoria and B.C. building code requirements.

One of the most frustrating parts of housing is that city policies and staff seemed supportive when we 1st proposed it… but about a year into the process, staff refused to move it forward while they developed the new OCP… & then after a year delay, opposed the project based on the new draft policy.

With planning, it’s not so much what’s transparently stated; it’s how the policies work together that limits home construction and digs us deeper into this unnecessary crisis.

Mainly, the new OCP encourages three lot amalgamation with six storey block buildings.

I don’t think we’re going to see many homes w/o a ton of variances… the staff report on our project & presentation suggests very few variances would be supported:
pub-victoria.escribemeetings.com/Meeting.aspx...

Mainly the 8m rear yard setback eliminates the potential to build two buildings and have livable homes on almost all lots. If they applied it to our project, our courtyard would have been 1-2m wide.

There’s a ton of rules in those documents that limit most innovative approaches to new homes

Fortunately, council supported it and we are moving this project ahead, as long as the many new city fees still make sense for this build.

Hopefully, the official community plan will be amended to allow these in the future. Small socially connected neighbourhoods within neighbourhoods are needed.