Building permit applications surge in Edmonton, leading to delays for some new housing

The City of Edmonton is lagging behind some of its targets for processing development permits amid a surge of applications and a construction boom.

According to the city's application processing times website, most application types are processed within targeted times but development permits for new multi-unit residential projects, including row houses with five or more units, stacked row houses, apartments or condos without commercial space, are taking 181 days on average to be processed. Only 20 per cent of those applications are being processed within the city's 90-day target.

Processing of non-complex rezoning, subdivision endorsements, engineering drawing reviews and infill development permit applications are also delayed, but not by as many days. 

Complaints from people in the development industry about the delays reached the ears of Coun. Keren Tang, who raised the issue in a city council meeting Tuesday. 

Councillors also recently received a memo from administration about "drops in some service levels" as a result of increased application volumes.

Travis Pawlyk, branch manager of development services for the City of Edmonton, said there has been a 35 per cent year-over-year increase in permit application volumes and between January and June of this year, housing starts have increased by 67 per cent, compared to the same time period last year.

"Our forecasts weren't that bullish," he said in an interview with CBC News Thursday morning.

What's driving the increase?

Pawlyk said a number of factors are driving the surge in applications, including more people moving to Alberta and the city's new zoning bylaw, which includes regulations that allow for more density.

Pawlyk said the city has approved 90 permits for row housing this year, resulting in more than 600 new housing units. Before the new zoning bylaw came into effect in January, these row housing projects would have had to go through a rezoning process in order to proceed to development permit stage.

The city has also seen multi-unit residential project applications surge by nearly 200 per cent since last year.

According to the memo city councillors received, city staff have also been seeing more complex applications and a higher percentage of incomplete applications, particularly relating to infill developments.

Sean Sedgwick, the executive director at the Infill Development in Edmonton Association (IDEA), said failures in communication and education between the city and developers mean some developers are not aware of new processes before they submit their permit applications.

Pawlyk said the new zoning bylaw has come with a learning curve for both city staff and industry applicants.

"We're working diligently to ensure that we can reduce those timelines because that is part of our goal — more infill housing," he said.

Why do delays matter?

Sedgwick said project delays can mean developers pay more in interest on loans taken out to finance projects. This cost ultimately gets passed on to people buying homes, he said. 

Kalen Anderson, the chief executive officer for BILD Edmonton Metro, a real estate industry association, said permit delays also affect trades and suppliers lined up to complete projects.

Though people in the industry don't want delays, they understand city staff are dealing with "an avalanche of work" right now, she said.

"I don't want to leave anyone with the impression that we're happy with delays or accept this as a new normal, but in some sense, a bit of self-reflection and honesty about the situation we're in is needed," she said. 

Anderson said it's not surprising that multi-unit and infill developments are seeing longer delays because those types of projects are more likely to be more complex and have more customization. New suburban development, she said, tends to be easier to develop in mass quantities.

City introduces automation

Pawlyk said the city is assigning more staff, assigning overtime and using automation to approve applications faster.

The new house development permit automation process, which launched on Monday, allows for same-day approvals for single detached or semi-detached homes in greenfield — previously undeveloped — areas.

Pawlyk says the city has been testing the automation process since January and it has been working as expected. He said automating low-risk applications should allow the city to reallocate resources to more complex ones, speeding up timelines overall.

Brian Watters, construction manager for Akash Homes and the chair of BILD Edmonton Metro's builder technical committee, said it's an exciting development.

"It gives us a tool to really define our start times," he said. 

Sedgwick, with IDEA, said the infill industry association supports the city using automation, but would like to see the city remove more red tape for infill developers as well.