Mike Starchuk hosted a roundtable discussion on housing March 15.
Ravi Kahlon, NDP Minister of Housing, was on hand and several developers from the Surrey area were invited to offer their concerns on the current state of the industry.
Starchuk, MLA for Surrey-Cloverdale, hosted the meeting at his constituency office and said those present represented the gamut of project construction—from high rises right down to single family homes.
“The meeting went really well,” said Starchuk. “Eight developers were there and they brought forth their concerns about the stumbling blocks they face.”
Their biggest concern, Starchuk noted, was the time it takes to get development permits issued.
Starchuk said there are some pilot projects the government is using to try to streamline and speed up the permitting process. By working with different levels of government, they hope to bring in a fully digitized permitting process to help cut up a lot of the red tape that leads to delays.
“Surrey is one of the pilot project cities,” Starchuk noted. “The government has given Surrey, I think, $3 million, I can’t remember the exact number, to expedite the permitting process.”
Scott Wheatley, the executive director the Cloverdale District Chamber of Commerce, sat in on the meeting and also noted permit time was the big problem everyone mentioned.
“The time it takes to get anything going is a killer,” said Wheatley. “One of the things the provincial government is working on his streamlining the process.”
He said they want to get all the building codes digitized to help create a system that will work for all levels of government.
“They want to work with the cities to speed up the time it takes to get an actual permit.”
Wheatley said one developer complained that the amount of paperwork just to get a project off the ground is four times what it was several years ago, which adds enormously to their delays.
He added another developer questioned unnecessary building codes, things that add to cost but only affect a sliver of the population.
“Basically, the roundtable was about exploring more common sense ways of doing things.”