February 14, 2017

Micro-Suites in Vancouver-How Small Is Small?

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The Vancouver Sun’s Kent Spencer asks the question-do we really want to live in micro-suites?  And should the City be encouraging these  tiny places?

Vancouver’s restrictions on minimum building sizes are quite sad because so many people want these things,” said Jon Stovell, president of Reliance Properties, which has sold-out micro-suite projects in Surrey and Victoria. “You talk to people on the street and they get it. They’d buy them in a minute. Tiny apartments would alleviate the affordability crisis, he said, with prices starting at $225,000 at a time when the average condo in Vancouver is roughly $550,000, up 40 per cent in the last three years.”

A micro-suite is a tiny apartment in the 250 to 300 square foot range-that is a space ten feet wide and twenty-five feet long. Vancouver planners will review the standard, and currently are uncomfortable with permitting strata units under 400 square feet. The City’s planning department does undertake post occupancy surveys to assess residents’ attitudes about small spaces and to ensure that the spaces are livable.

Developers argue that the multi-functionality of small spaces will mean that there are cost savings, and small places with smaller price tags are the way to go. There are  also some studies that are suggesting that living in small spaces is detrimental to  mental and physical health, without the many steps and tasks that are part of every day living.

The video below of a 225 square foot designer’s apartment in New York City. Should these small size condos be allowed? Or are these  micro-suites just squishing the property owner dream?

 

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  1. Considering how easy it is to physically build structures to be slightly larger, this is just plain silly.
    Once electrical, plumbing and other services are installed, how much does it cost to build a square foot of structure? Probably well under $100. These spaces aren’t all that much cheaper to build. All in, most buildings aren’t expense to construct, the land value dominates the value of improvements in this city.
    If this is at all a consequence of only allowing relatively low FSRs and small buildings in this city; I don’t think it’s a fair exchange to make living spaces disproportionately small in exchange for protecting some [predefined views.

    1. THIS!
      Agree entirely, and other cities have maximum units/acre allowable (Squamish even) which effectively prevent the microization of units. An alternative would be to have FSR exclusions per unit which would eliminate the incentive to discover #HowMany[Hipsters,Millenials,GenX,Retirees,etc]FitOnTheHeadOfAPin?
      Just like Toronto doesn’t count balconies in FSR (so has many, despite poor climate for said) and Vancouver does count (with exceptions, but still, small balconies despite good balcony weather most of year) .. what is determined to be FSR has a huge weight into the livability of a building.
      Take as an example, BIG’s 8 building vs BIG’s Vancouver Twisty … former has lots of public space, meeting space, activity space, etc … the latter, almost none. Any social spaces here come at the expense of sellable space, so why would there be any? Why would anyone design a building that had any surplus ‘inefficient’ space that would aid the health and wellbeing of its residents?
      There are studies which show the poor mental health implication of too small living (of course there are the same for spending too much $ on housing), but if the only answer to affordability is shrinking, there is no bottom limit to what could be built more cheaply, and sold for more profit, without something which takes away from the incentive to pack more people into less space.
      BC Housing has some excellent guidelines on the minimum size of units, somewhere around 600sf for 1br, and 1000sf for 2br … these seem like excellent numbers to use as a lower bound, and as urbinflux says, the costs of the additional inbetween are quite trivial if they don’t take away from the # of sellable units, as long as all have to play by the same rules, there needn’t be a rush to the bottom or to seek out #HowManyHipstersFitOnTheHeadOfAPin?

    2. Disagree completely. Per suite and as a building they are cheaper to build; utilities are easier and faster to build in clusters, no expensive timber. Smart use of space can create a very convinient home base.

  2. These types of discussions, of which there are far too many, are the direct result nimby attitudes; I have my place in the sun, no more changes. And micro-minded elected officials with virtually no understanding of the dynamics of population growth etc etc etc.

  3. Tiny apartments would alleviate the affordability crisis.>
    It’s more complicated than that. Plethora of new and adaptive reuse housing measures need to be implemented city and Metro-wide to increase the diversity of housing choice using less land. Micro-condos are … er … a tiny part of that.

  4. Microsuites merely legitimize the speculative excess of the Vancouver real estate market. When a recent study shows that Vancouver’s inventory of empty homes continues to climb, forcing actual residents into these while larger homes sit empty is a travesty.

    1. So what’s your solution, Bob? Break into the homes of snowbirds and offer six months accommodation against the wills of the owners? Hit them with an unenforceable tax? Try to define what “vacant” really means when owners spend summers at the cottage, seniors have extended post-surgery therapy in care facilities, an illegal renovation is shut down while the owner sorts it out with the city, or the estate of a deceased senior is sorted out by the family and lawyers over several years? How long does a home have to be vacant before it’s truly vacant? Does “vacant” also mean unfurnished with no power connection?
      The term “vacant homes” has become a pejorative against foreigners that also happens to excuse the city from fixing its outdated zoning bylaws to actually accommodate affordable freehold single-family homes.

    1. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/the-health-risks-of-small-apartments/282150/
      “Sure, these micro-apartments may be fantastic for young professionals in their 20’s,” says Dak Kopec, director of design for human health at Boston Architectural College and author of Environmental Psychology for Design. “But they definitely can be unhealthy for older people , say in their 30’s and 40’s, who face different stress factors that can make tight living conditions a problem.”
      We as a city already have a deficit of family-appropriate housing, this just makes that worse.

  5. I tend to think that a strata of small units may be problematic (wrt contribution to maintenance costs) if all the purchasers are investors. At least with other projects having a large proportion of one-bedroom units, there may be a shift in the proportion of owner/investors over time.
    So, while I don’t have a problem with the livable size, the ownership and administration of the building as a rental might be better than as a strata.
    BTW – while it may be fine and well to speculate about the mental wellness of people living in small units, but if the only viable alternative (with vacancy and available cash) is to live farther afield or in a dank squalid basement, other stressful factors might be introduced into the person’s lifestyle – so I don’t think we can speculate that prohibiting small units will relieve a person’s stress levels.

    1. Its a fallacy to think that smaller is always the only tradeoff against too far, too squalid, etc … it is a tradeoff when the only things being built are market rate, by developers, who are limited by FSR but not minimum unit size.
      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/10909403/British-homes-are-the-smallest-in-Europe-study-finds.html
      British homes are smaller than those on the continent, for ex., but certainly no cheaper.
      It is only because there are no/few limits on housing size that it is a free-for-all for making micro.
      In the UK, the RIBA has been campaigning for larger minimum space standards: https://www.architecture.com/RIBA/Campaigns%20and%20issues/Assets/Files/HomewiseReport2015.pdf
      There is undoubtedly a fuzzy line for how small is too small … but there is certainly a lower limit https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/nov/06/government-proposes-minimum-bedroom-size-for-rental-properties
      “In one instance, tenants at a flat in Hendon, north London, had to crawl on all fours to reach their rented bedroom, because the entrance was just 70cm high.
      Another flat was so small that the only way to get into the wall-mounted bed was to stand on top of the fridge and climb up a ladder.
      Elsewhere, landlords have divided living spaces into what letting agents have dubbed “semi-studios”, or “mezzanine sleeping areas”, where a large shelf is mounted little more than a metre from the ceiling with space for a mattress.”
      The question is, what good does it do to set a low-low limit … it is natural that this will be tested, and tested again, with an incentive to squeeze more into less.
      There needn’t be that competition if more generous minimum sizes are the standard everyone must follow.

  6. I don’t think municipalities are contemplating those extremes here.
    I see a dishwasher and laundry in the photos – appliances that many larger rental units do not have.

  7. I don’t know what the minimum size should be, but I do think there should be a legislated minimum size. Psychologists and behavioural specialists can probably figure that out.
    Some people think the market of supply and demand should be left free to sort it out. But, I liken it to having a minimum wage or a cap on payday loan interest rates. Desperate people will get taken advantage of. At a certain point, it crosses into predatory practices.
    In Hong Kong, people live in cages:
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2275206/Hong-Kongs-metal-cage-homes-How-tens-thousands-live-6ft-2ft-rabbit-hutches.html

    1. SRO rentals are legal. Vancouver has taken steps to preserve them. WHY is it OK to rent but not OK to purchase a SRO or a micro apartment.

  8. Because they’re currently there but they’re godawful for the occupants.
    Should they definitely be replaced with a higher standing of housing? Definitely. The problem is that it can’t be done immediately without throwing people back into the grips of homelessness, though.
    Why would you want to build more of that crap, let alone suggest that people who are in anywhere near a good enough financial standing to buy a home buy that junk.
    It’s a race to the bottom that won’t benefit anybody.

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