Township of Langley finding ways to speed up home building: Mayor

City of Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim is looking at Burnaby as a role model for housing density, and he might want to take a look at the Township of Langley next.

Mayor Eric Woodward says the township has been chipping away at processes that slow down building plans over the past year.

“In November, a building permit for a single-family home was around 12-14 months … we now have that down to a week,” he said. “We’re now reforming the other parts of the process around multi-family building permits, service agreements, and all the other aspects to get underway more quickly.”

On a larger scale, developments in the township with public interest like providing infrastructure or finished roads have dropped from up to three years to just a few months.

“We have gotten to the point where some developments that we identify having an element of public interest — such as providing infrastructure, or a finished road — sometimes we’ve gotten those to council in a couple of months,” Woodward added.

“It’s been our goal under this council to reform the process … and we’re very close to achieving that.”

Woodward says the community is densifying along a transit corridor with hopes of getting more transit for residents — something he says is in short supply.

He’s also hoping that building more homes can increase the development infrastructure like hospitals, which he notes ore of concern as they aren’t keeping pace.