Win! Oak Bay allows secondary suites and boarders, without additional parking

Greater Victoria Acting Together members, as well as Camosun and UVic students, have been campaigning to get Oak Bay to improve their secondary suite and roomers / boarders policies for years. And now Oak Bay, after a vote on July 18, has directed staff to create a better policy than some other area municipalities! 

In Victoria, Saanich, and most area municipalities, bylaws say you are not allowed to have a secondary suite and rent a room to a Camosun or UVic student. But now Oak Bay will be a leader in the region by allowing both in the same house, if the policy gets final approval. (In 2018 the provincial building code was changed to allow secondary suites of unlimited size, and now a considerable percentage of new secondary suites are family-sized two- and three-bedroom units.)

Staff have been instructed to create policy that will ensure the following:

•  All houses in Oak Bay will be able to have one secondary suite (Oak Bay was the only municipality that did not allow this).

• Houses can have both a boarder and a suite; no short-term rentals.

• Up to 6 unrelated people can live in a home; 7 if one is a caregiver.

• No additional parking is required if the homeowner has a single exterior wall plug and a sheltered space for bike storage.

All of these changes require Oak Bay council to approve the policy that staff creates, at a future meeting.

Under this proposed policy Oak Bay will have a requirement that extra parking is required if the house is not close to a transit stop, and GVAT will continue to work to get this changed and ensure that public transit is improved in Oak Bay and across the region.