The Denman Housing Review, explained from the bylaw text: house size, suites, “Land-Share” zones, tiny homes, cisterns and the end of the density bank

2026-09-02

The Denman Island Local Trust Committee has taken its Housing Review to second reading: Bylaw 260 amends the official community plan and Bylaw 264 replaces the land use bylaw’s residential rules. Summaries are circulating. This is the text. Every clause below is quoted or paraphrased from the proposed bylaws as printed in the 24 August 2026 agenda package (Islands Trust document DE-LTC_2026-08-24_RM_AGD.pdf, pages 141 to 383), and the page numbers are the package’s. It is the second-reading draft: some numbers are shown struck through and replaced, and the whole thing can still change at the public hearing.

Where it stands. First reading 12 May 2026. Community information meeting 11 July 2026. Second reading, as amended, 24 August 2026 (the motions, 4:15:10). Public hearing and community information meeting: Tuesday 15 September 2026, 10:30 a.m., Denman Activity Centre gym, 1111 Northwest Road. After third reading the bylaws need approval by the Trust’s Executive Committee and, for the OCP amendment, the provincial minister.

1. How big a house can be

This is new. The current bylaw has no limit on the size of a house. The proposed one does, and the number is 300 square metres of gross floor area, about 3,230 square feet. “Gross floor area” is measured to the outside of the walls across all storeys, but it excludes covered porches, decks, terraces, eaves and cisterns (definitions, package p. 300).

  • Residential (R1) zone: “The maximum gross floor area of a principal dwelling unit shall not exceed 300 square metres.” (s. 5.1(10), p. 316)
  • Rural Residential (R2) zone: “The combined maximum gross floor area of a principal dwelling unit and secondary suite shall not exceed 300 m²,” and where an existing house already exceeds 300 m², any secondary dwelling built after it is limited to 90 m² (s. 5.2(10)–(11), p. 319). So on rural lots the cap covers the house and its suite together.
  • Land-Share (R3) zone: each dwelling is capped at 139.4 m², exactly 1,500 square feet (s. 5.3(8), p. 323).
  • Affordable Rental (R4) zone: each affordable unit is capped at 140 m² (p. 326).

Existing houses larger than the cap are not made illegal; bylaws do not work backwards. The limit bites when you build, rebuild or add. If you had heard a figure of 2,600 square feet, it is not in this draft; the residential caps are 300 m², which is larger.

Lot coverage is also capped: 15% of the lot for lots under 0.6 ha, 10% from 0.6 to 1.2 ha, 5% at 1.2 ha or more (R1 and R2, pp. 316, 319).

2. How many homes on a lot

  • R1: one dwelling per hectare, to a maximum of two per lot; lots under a hectare get one (s. 5.1(3)–(4)).
  • R2: one principal dwelling per 4 hectares, to a maximum of four per lot; a lot under 4 hectares gets one principal dwelling and one secondary dwelling unit; and every principal dwelling may have one secondary suite inside it (s. 5.2(3)–(5)).
  • Agriculture (A): one dwelling per lot, plus one suite or secondary dwelling on ALR land, within the provincial ALR rules (s. 5.5(4), (7)).
  • Forestry (F): one dwelling per lot plus one suite and one secondary dwelling (s. 5.6(4), (6)).

A “secondary suite” is a self-contained unit inside the main house, no bigger than the rest of the house. A “secondary dwelling unit” can be attached or a separate small building, “limited in floor area” (definitions, p. 300).

At the July meeting staff put the net effect at a reduction of about 100 dwelling units in the island’s total permitted density, achieved by changing how many principal dwellings each zone allows while widening where suites are allowed (draft minutes of 11 July 2026, in the same package). The OCP amendment deletes the density cap and the density bank in their entirety (Bylaw 260 ss. 47–49, p. 175) and replaces them with policy: “In the Residential designation, zoning regulations should ensure that development maintains a low-density character” (new Policy 10), and in the Rural designation additional units “may be permitted … only on sufficiently large lots where adequate fresh water supply and wastewater treatment are available” (new Policy 11, p. 173).

3. “Co-housing” becomes “Land-Share Housing”

The existing Cohousing (R3) zone is renamed Land-Share Housing. Its purpose clause is rewritten as “community-oriented residential development consisting of clustered private dwellings and shared community spaces, with housing affordability and long-term community benefit secured through appropriate legal mechanisms” (s. 5.3, p. 322). The rules: on a lot of 35 hectares or more, up to 19 dwelling units (the draft strikes 15 and writes 19); each dwelling at most 139.4 m²; a common house of up to 279 m² for shared kitchen, meeting, library and laundry, which may sleep guests but may not be a separate home; accessory buildings up to a combined 2,174 m² (struck: 1,275); minimum lot for subdivision 64 hectares. It is a zone you rezone into; it does not apply to anyone’s land unless they apply.

4. Affordable rental, non-market housing, and the ALR

The Affordable Rental Housing (R4) zone is for multi-family rental only, secured by a registered housing agreement, with units up to 140 m² and a 1-hectare minimum lot on subdivision (s. 5.4, pp. 324–326). The OCP’s new Policy 29 says the committee “should consider” rezoning applications for multi-unit, non-market housing where the proposal is small-scale and rural in character, outside mapped connectivity areas, proves water and sewage, and comes with a housing agreement (p. 173). New advocacy policies support an application to the Agricultural Land Commission to exclude land for affordable housing, and add “non-market, rental and special needs housing secured with a housing agreement” to what the plan treats as an essential community service on farmland (ss. 44–45, p. 175). The four housing objectives are replaced; the new ones name community diversity, groundwater and sewage capacity, First Nations interests, and “non-market housing and opportunities for seniors to age in place” (s. 27, p. 172).

5. Tiny homes, RVs and yurts

An “alternative dwelling unit” is defined as “a self-contained structure or vehicle used or intended for residential occupancy” including RVs, travel trailers, motor homes, park-model trailers, tiny homes on wheels and yurts (definitions, p. 289). Section 3.9 lets one be lived in as a home if it meets the Public Health Act, has a domestic water supply, complies with the zone’s density and setbacks, is not rented to paying guests, counts as a dwelling unit for density, and sits on a lot larger than 1 hectare, screened from neighbours (p. 308). In other words a legal way to live in a tiny home on a rural lot, counted against the lot’s allowance.

6. Short-term rentals and pools

Section 3.2 prohibits in every zone “the use of an entire dwelling unit for short-term accommodation, vacation rental or for the provision of transient lodging to paying guests” (p. 301). Renting rooms in the home you live in, bed-and-breakfast style, remains the route for paying guests. The same section prohibits building or filling a swimming pool from a well or any groundwater source. The bylaw notice schedule sets a $500 ticket (discounted to $375 within 14 days) for a whole-home vacation rental (p. 738 of the extracted text; Bylaw 265).

7. Water

No siting permit for a new dwelling larger than 90 m² without cisterns holding at least 18,000 litres; smaller dwellings need 13,640 litres (s. 3.10, p. 308; the threshold moves down from 93 m²). OCP Policy 13 requires every subdivision intended to support housing to prove adequate water “supported by a climate-informed water management plan that demonstrates long-term aquifer sustainability under projected climate change conditions” (p. 171). At second reading the trustees asked staff whether that wording shuts out rain-catchment developments; staff answered that provincial subdivision rules require groundwater proof anyway (3:46:15).

8. Home occupations, care, and daycare

Home-based assisted living is permitted as a home occupation, capped at three rooms of residents at a time; a home daycare at seven children. Home occupations may use up to 60% of the dwelling’s floor area, or on lots of a hectare or more, 60% of the dwelling and accessory buildings combined (ss. 2.4 and general regulations, pp. 310–311).

9. Subdivision

The OCP gets a new section on subdivision that calls it “one of the most negatively impactful mechanisms for increasing housing density and shaping settlement patterns” and says that on Denman it “has generally not resulted in affordable or diverse housing” (Bylaw 260 s. 16, p. 170). The old subdivision policies in the housing section and the Village section are deleted (ss. 17, 28, pp. 171–172). Minimum lot areas for new subdivision in the residential zones are set at 64 hectares in R2 and R3, which in practice ends subdivision there except by rezoning.

10. What is not in it

Nothing in either bylaw permits the small-scale multi-unit housing that the province required of municipalities in 2023 (three to six units on a residential lot). Whether that duty reaches a local trust committee at all is the question this site has put to the Ministry and the Trust. What the committee said about the province’s housing-needs figures while adopting this draft is recorded separately.

How to read the actual text

Open the 24 August 2026 agenda package on the Trust’s Denman LTC page and go to page 141 for the staff report, page 160 for the OCP’s housing paragraph, page 289 for definitions, page 300 for suites, pages 308–326 for the zone rules quoted above, and page 175 for the density-bank deletion. Then come to the hearing on 15 September. If a clause above is wrong, say so and it will be corrected on this page with the correction noted.