Dear Editor:
Re: West Van Aims to ‘Incentivize’ Coach Houses, Dec. 9 news story.
The whole concept of coach houses as a viable alternative to basement rental suites or “adding different housing choices and affordability in the district” is little more than smoke and mirrors.
The cost to build a coach house is well into the six-figure mark. No potential landlord would opt to spend two, three, four hundred thousand dollars on a rental suite with any hope of recouping the costs to build it for at least a decade, if ever. Once built, the rent on a brand new coach house in West Vancouver would not be considered “affordable” by any standards.
Coach houses are not cost-effective to build or maintain, evidenced by the fact that in over two years since council approved coach houses, only seven people have applied to build them.
If council is sincerely interested in addressing the crisis of supply level of rental units on the North Shore or housing affordability, scrap the coach house idea entirely and focus on “incentivizing” the construction of new attached rental units and the maintenance of current rental stock.
Caroline Chambers, North Vancouver
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