Not so family-friendly?: Council raises concerns about lack of bedrooms in proposed Brentwood development

A new development in Brentwood Town Centre with a proposed 1,461 residential units has raised concerns with council due to a lack of family-friendly housing, particularly with how many bedrooms are available in its non-market rental units.

Emerald Place is made up of four developments that would be built over the course of four phases. The development site is comprised of two lots at 2300 Madison Ave., which is currently occupied by an industrial warehouse building and a BC Hydro right-of-way.

Phase 1 will include a single-storey highrise residential strata and non-market rental building, a six-storey non-market residential building and a sales centre for the development.

Phases 2 and 3 are comprised of single high-rise strata residential buildings at 42 and 35 storeys, respectively. The last phase is a 41-storey highrise residential building and an extension of the six-storey non-market rental residential building.

In total, there are 1,461 residential units proposed for Emerald Place, with 1,261, being market strata and 200 designated as non-market rentals, 20% of the CMHC median.

However, the breakdown of the non-market rentals for the development does not include any three-bedroom units, which brought up concern from Coun. Alison Gu during Monday’s council meeting.

“That’s a problem for families, and with regards to non-market housing that is especially a problem due to National Housing Standards, which essentially say that if you have children over the age of… seven, and they are the opposite sex, that they cannot share a bedroom, otherwise you are subject to potentially be evicted.”

Gu was referring to the National Occupancy Standard which “provides a common reference point for “suitable” housing, which is how many people a given dwelling unit might accommodate given the number of bedrooms.”

“I don’t think this sends a very clear family-friendly message. We think that we should be supporting families of all income levels to be able to achieve reasonable housing,” said Gu.

The city’s general manager of planning and development, Ed Kozak, said that this particular location poses a “challenge” for families to be able to access schools.

“But this is really intended for … the younger, smaller families that are growing. And so the smaller unit sizes were seen as appropriate.”

Couns. Pietro Calendino and Daniel Tetrault also agreed that three-bedroom units needed to be included in the non-market rental portion of the development.

“I agree with Coun. Gu that staff should have a closer discussion with the developer and some three-bedrooms should be added,” he said, noting that although some units have two bedrooms and a den, those spaces are not big enough to accommodate the space for another room.

Tetrault asked whether a lack of school in the area determines the number of bedrooms when planning for adequate units for growing families.

“Not entirely,” said Kozak. “It is more distance from schools. We look at a balance for an entire neighbourhood, and we’d like to focus the larger units around parks and schools when we can. It’s not to say this isn’t family-friendly housing, it’s just that they are smaller units for smaller families that may be growing in the future.

“I see in this plan that some of the market strata will have three bedrooms, but with this 20% non-market … I think it’s important to go back and look at some three-bedrooms here in this project and all future developments.”

Gu then pointed out that the site was a 15-minute drive and three-minute walk away from Kitchener Elementary School, and asked again why more larger units weren’t being considered.

“In application, I haven’t seen a single development come forward that exceeds, what in our Housing Needs Report says the Burnaby need for three-bedrooms is,” she said.

“So if we’re consistently, and in some cases, building zero units of three-bedrooms but in no instances exceeding, how are we going to make up that gap?”

Coun. Sav Dhaliwal, who is currently acting mayor in Mike Hurley’s absence, requested that staff issue a memo looking into Gu’s point.

Council voted to approve authorization to forward the development application to a future public hearing. Gu opposed.