Council Term in Review Part 1 : Development

With the current councils term coming to an end, it is timely to reflect upon what actually was achieved during this term under the guidance of current council with respect to development and housing affordability. During the term the new provincial rules came into effect with the introduction of provincial government's intervention under Bill 44. Essentially this bill amended all single family lots to now accommodate 3 or 4 dwelling units and municipalities were required to amend their zoning bylaws to reflect this change. In this process municipalities were also required to complete a housing needs assessment to identify the amount of new housing necessary to meet the expected growth over the next 5 years. In this article, I will attempt to examine councils effectiveness in meeting the provincial expectation for new homes during their term.

What actually got approved?

The development process can involve many steps. Development permits (DP) are legal tools used by local governments to guide how land and buildings look, function and fit into the community. Zoning and Zoning variances are site specific and deal with issues like number of units per parcel, building heights and setbacks from property lines. Building permits are good proxy to use for actual development because applying for a building permit signals the intention of the developer to actually proceed to build. The terms and conditions imposed by council in the earlier steps of development sometimes make specific projects financially unviable and hence they never proceed to a building permit stage.

A consolidated view of a the town's "building permits issued" reports is shown below.

Building permit data from the towns website # of new dwelling units
	Single family homes	Secondary / garden Suites	Multi Residential
Nov + Dec 2022	4	2	0
2023	18	15	0*
2024	11	13	5
2025	19	12	4
Jan1 to Jun30 2026	14	8	4
Total	66	50	13

In this table, I have removed both the 56 unit Railway affordable housing project and the 15 unit Samantha Place projects as both were multi year projects with density approved by the prior council. Further, it is important to consider that of the total 66 single family home building permits some represent homes in the Pheasant Glen multi year project where the density was also approved by the prior council. The 2024, the 5 multi residential units include 4 nightly rental hotel rooms in the Agora Boutique Hotel. Not included in the table is the 8 plex on Fern Street and the project at 365 west First Ave, which is the subdivision of a single family home into 3 dwelling units. Neither of these projects have proceeded to building permit stage.

In summary over this councils term to date a total of 129 new dwelling units have been approved and actually permitted for construction to commence.

How many new homes are we expected to build?

As mandated by the province an interim housing needs assessment report was undertaken by Deloitte in 2024. The point of the report was to use a standard approach throughout the province to determine the local housing needs within both a 5 year and 20 year time frame.

Based on this report we need 726 new homes within the 5 year period, and 2435 new homes within a 20 year period. While many will argue that Qualicum Beach is unique and will disagree with the approach taken in the report, which uses regional homeless data in their calculations, the report does give a general sense of the overall regional need as summarized below.

Table1: Summary of local housing need in Qualicum Beach
	5 year need	20 year need
0/1 bedroom	107	320
2 bedroom	214	745
3 bedroom	302	1026
4+ bedroom	102	345
Total housing need	726	2435

Clearly this council term has not contributed significantly to solving the housing need even though housing is listed as one of this council's primary focus areas. What is being built are single family homes and a number of small infill garden suites. No one would dispute that this type of housing fits in well with the community's village character. Little progress has been made by this council to accommodate the needs of seniors wishing to downsize from their existing larger homes and young families looking for more affordable townhouse style housing.

What major projects remain in the development hopper?

Based on a review of the towns website a number of multi unit projects are still in the various stages of seeking approval to proceed. All are supported with positive staff recommendations to approve.

Sunset Project - 52 strata units at 532 Memorial at Hoylake E. This project was first brought before council on January 8th, 2025. It has appeared on a council agenda 5 times and has been referred to the Advisory Planning Commission (APC) twice. On Feb11 2026 the decision to approve (or not) to issue of the Development Permit DP and Development Variance Permit (DVP) was postponed to March 25th . During the March 25th meeting, the matter was again deferred to a "future" meeting of council. As a result, it would appear the applicant and the development remain in limbo until after the election.

Qualicum Place - 55 rental units at 201 First Ave W at Beach . This project was first brought to council on Oct16 /2024. and has been in front of council on many occasions. The project was reviewed by the APC on Oct 8/25 with recommendation for reducing height and roofline alterations. The last time this project came to council was on April 22 2026 at which time the zoning amendment was read a first time and council determined consideration to second reading of the zoning amendment would be differed until further documents including complete set of plans and building elevation streetscape plans were provided by the applicant.

Lasqueti View - 66 unit strata development on the 3022 Island Hwy. W

The property as come before council many times over the past few years with various proposals. The current version proposed is 66 units in 3 three story buildings above a parking podium, which came to council on March 25th 2026 requesting approval to issue the statutory notice requirements. DVP and DP were approved on April 2026. The developers website reports this project at design stage and we understand no building permit has been issued to date.

Eaglecrest Golf Course Lands - Lot Parcel # 2 - This is land now owned by the town as part of the Eaglecrest Golf course acquisition. Request for Proposals to develop Parcel # 2 lands was issued in May with a July 8, 2026, closing date. Parcel #2 lands consist of 6.1 acres, divided into two development sections. The RFP package included several concept options indicating the number of single and multi-unit housing units that could be considered. It is understood that no satisfactory offers were received by the July 8th deadline and that further action has been deferred at this time. This deferral may be influenced by the upcoming election campaign as the multi storey development has meet with considerable public opposition in this well established single family home neighbourhood.

East Village - 673 Fir Street - 69 residential rental units with ground floor commercial and various garden features along a pathway. Zoning Amendment Application brought forward to Council on June 24, 2026, and determined to be OCP compliant. The project was referred to APC, for comment on four items, including height, density and form and character. APC gave general approval. The project received first reading on July 15, 2026, subject to addressing several additional items. The minutes of this meeting have not been approved or posted yet. However, the applicant has provided responses on these items and is waiting for second reading. The project does not appear on the last council meeting Sept.9/26 agenda so it is deferred until after the election.

Notable projects rejected by council

324 Chester Rd rezoning request to permit the conversion of a single family home into 4 side by side townhomes in the Qualicum Woods neighbourhood. We have written about this proposal in more detail here. Essentially the owner wanted the ability to give each unit a separate strata title. Existing zoning allowed for the 4 town houses but only 2 strata titles. Effectively this condition makes the project unviable as the owner would need to find two buyers willing to own 2 units each. Council's approach to restrict development by withholding ownership titles is contrary to the spirit of Bill 44 and is contrary to councils stated goals of improving access to attainable market housing.

431 College Road This application was to convert a failed condo project to be built on the Old College Inn site into a new privately funded 100 bed long term care facility. On October 22, 2025 council denied the application. (Harrison and Young were in favour of the project proceeding and Westbroek, Skipsey, VanderValk were opposed to the project.) By Nov 1 2025 Council approved OCP and rezoning of a parcel in Eaglecrest to permit a similar long term care project on lands the town intended to acquire. Fast forward to today, no buyers have come forward to purchase the Eaglecrest land designated for seniors care, and the Lantzville long term care facility funded by the province has not yet broken ground. Council has written to the cash strapped province encouraging better use of the Eagle Park facility vacant lands. In the interim, Qualicum Beach residents needing this type of residential care are being placed in other communities on the island often at considerable distance from their spouses and other social connections.

Other determents toward market attainable housing

During this term, Council has made several bylaw amendments that significantly add to the cost of development in Qualicum Beach. The tree protection bylaw, in one case has added $84,000 per lot to remove trees necessary for roads and servicing. For more information on how the tree bylaw impacts costs see our previous article here.

On May1 2023 The BC building Code made Step 3 energy efficiency mandatory for most new residential construction across the province. Qualicum Beach's approach to the provincial zero carbon step codes by amending the Building Bylaw to accelerate step code requirements for new construction at a pace far in advance of the Province's agenda, has also had a negative effect on affordability and could well be one of the reasons developers are not in a hurry to buy the now town owned Eaglecrest lands.

Interestingly, the Mayor made a motion during the September 9th 2026 council meeting to instruct staff to amend the bylaw to now match the province's proposed schedule. The motion passed during this last meeting of the council's term but not without considerable discussion and reluctance.

Further changes made in the Official Community Plan by this council which now require

having a minimum density requirement of two dwelling units per lot for redevelopment within the Village Neighbourhood also have a negative impact on development. For those wishing to build a small home within walking distance to the town core, they will now need to also construct an additional home or garden suite to rent or sell. This effectively doubles the amount of capital required to achieve a new owner built home in the village neighbourhood and introduces development risk to someone simply wishing to build a new home for themselves.

Conclusion

This council has made no progress towards increasing the supply of multi residential rentals to accommodate seniors wanting to downsize without having to leave the community. Nor have they made attainable housing achievable by demonstrating flexibility with respect to strata titles. All we hear is "the project is too tall or too big and not a human scale." (Whatever that means?)

I find it hypocritical that this council is comfortable to play the role of developer of lands in Eaglecrest which will change that well established single family home neighbourhood, to now include up to 5 storeys. What happened to discouraging urban sprawl and concentrating density in the village core? How does this contribute to maintaining the character of our town, a value everyone seems to agree upon? Even in the East Village where we already have 6 storey residential buildings, the development process is painfully slow. In my opinion, this council's policies have added not only greater development uncertainty but also unnecessary expense inflating the cost to build.

Marie Noel

September 13, 2026

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