Burnaby Now September 15 2017

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COVERAGE FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2017

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PETITION LAUNCHED

‘Sometimes I really need help’

A laneway house could be the answer for Lucy Abreo’s family, but the city has yet to approve them By Tereza Verenca

tverenca@burnabynow.com

A North Burnaby resident has started a petition in hopes of getting the city to fast track the approval of laneway housing. Lucy Abreo is the full-time caregiver for her 90-year-old mother. With three injured tendons in her shoulder, having to provide care has become difficult for Abreo. “Sometimes I really need help,” she told the NOW. Abreo wants to build an additional home on her lot so that she and her mom could move in, and her son and his wife could move into the main house and help out. “Every jurisdiction – Surrey, North Vancouver, Vancouver, West Vancouver, Coquitlam – they have it. Why can’t we?” she asked. The City of Burnaby allows secondary suites but does not permit laneway home development in single-family lots. Coun. Colleen Jordan, chair of the city’s planning committee, said council wants to see how secondary suites play out first. (The secondary suites program for single-family homes was adopted in 2014, and since then, more than 1,000 permits for the construction of these units in either new or existing residences have been issued.) “We didn’t want to do two things at once. We basically wanted to say, ‘Let’s see how

WAITING: Burnaby resident Lucy Abreo wants to build an additional home on her lot so that she and her 90-year-old mom could live there and her son and his wife could move into the main house and help out. Current city bylaws do not allow for laneway houses. PHOTO JENNIFER GAUTHIER this works and what impact it has on neighbourhoods before we started saying, ‘Oh, now we’re going to add another level of housing in single-family neighbourhoods,’” Jordan explained. The councillor added staff have looked at laneway development in other municipalities and found parking was a big problem.

“It got to the point in some neighbourhoods in Surrey where you couldn’t get a fire truck down the street or in the alley because there were so many people living (there).” Some cities that implemented both secondary suites and laneway housing had to revisit their bylaws, noted Jordan, because there could be as many as nine cars at one lot.

But that doesn’t mean the city won’t consider laneway development down the road. “We don’t like to necessarily be the first ones to do something, but when we do it, we want to do it right,” said Jordan, adding it could take at least a couple of years before there’d be any movement on the file. “There’s all of those kinds of things you’d have to exam-

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ine before you went ahead with it. Even though someone may think, ‘Oh, there’s room in my backyard for that,’ it wouldn’t necessarily be universal for every part of the city.” Abreo’s petition has garnered more than 120 signatures to date. To sign, email burnabylanewayhomepetition@ gmail.com.w

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