Victoria’s council has decided to amend its Land Use Procedure Bylaw to comply with provincial regulations, eliminating public hearings for certain residential development applications consistent with the Official Community Plan (OCP). Public hearings will now only be required for OCP bylaws and amendments, and heritage property designation and revitalization agreements. Council also tasked staff with improving the bylaw’s clarity, efficiency, and transparency. City council is expecting to see the amended bylaw at the June 27 committee meeting.

These changes aim to expedite home building in alignment with provincial housing statutes.  The province’s legislation encourages denser housing forms to accelerate approvals and meet housing targets. Victoria surpassed its first-year target, issuing occupancy permits for 753 net new units in six months. Despite the progress, some councillors critiqued the targets for excluding shelter housing and advocated to use building permits as a metric instead of occupancy permits since they can’t control how long a project takes to build after they give it the green light.