Minister Boyle Reply re Housing Needs Report Methodology

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BRITISH  
COLUMBIA 
 
Office of the 
Minister of Housing 
and Municipal Affairs 
 
Website: 
www.gov.bc.ca/housing 
 
Mailing Address: 
PO Box 9074 Stn Prov Govt 
Victoria BC  V8W 9E9 
Phone: 236 478-3970 
 
Location: 
Parliament Buildings 
Victoria BC  V8V 1X4 
Email:  HMA.Minister@gov.bc.ca 
 
 
October 2, 2025
 
Reference: 187521
 
Laura Patrick 
Chair, Islands Trust Council 
200-1627 Fort Street 
Email: lpatrick@islandstrust.bc.ca 
 
Dear Chair Patrick: 
 
Thank you for your correspondence of July 10, 2025, regarding the Islands Trust Council’s 
request for a revision of the Housing Needs Report (HNR) methodology specifically for rural 
areas. 
 
In my new role as Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs, I am pleased to have the 
opportunity to reply to your concerns. 
 
I recognize that every community across British Columbia, including local trust areas and other 
rural areas, has different local housing needs. To ensure that they can reflect local size and 
context, the legislation provides communities a lot of flexibility in terms of the length, 
organization and format of HNRs. Beyond the relatively limited set of required content, 
communities are free to focus their HNRs on housing challenges of most local relevance. 
 
At the same time, for planning purposes it’s important to ensure a more robust, consistent, 
and comparable calculation of the overall amount of housing needed in each community. This 
is why the legislation requires use of the standardized ‘HNR Method’, which estimates the total 
number of homes to address a community’s current and anticipated housing needs over 20 
years. 
 
The HNR Method was developed in collaboration with housing experts and informed by 
recommendations from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and the Expert Panel on 
Housing Supply and Affordability. To ensure applicability across the province, it is based on 
data sources that provide community-level data. Of note, the HNR Method varies in one key 
respect for the Islands Trust and regional districts: in recognition of their more rural nature, it 
does not include the ‘demand factor’ component. This component only applies to 
municipalities and is meant to account for some extra capacity to meet healthy market 
demand in urban areas. 
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Laura Patrick 
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Ministry staff continue to monitor local implementation of the 2023-2024 housing-related 
legislation, to ensure it is working as intended. With the next updates to housing needs 
reports due in 2028 feedback like this from the Islands Trust will be helpful to our thinking 
about the requirements, including the HNR Method. 
 
Thank you again for taking the time to write. 
 
Sincerely, 
 
 
 
 
Christine Boyle 
Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs 
 
CC: Islands Trust Council 
 Bowen Island Municipal Council

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