Langley excursion:
When it comes to urban development, perhaps no aspect of daily life in Vancouver has changed as much (for the better) in the past 20 years as transit. It took about 110 minutes last week to make the run from downtown to Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Langley, and maybe 90 minutes back. A round trip to Langley in May 1999 required 8.5 hours (as my diary notes), “about three of which were spent waiting.”
Of course, some things stay the same, too: on both occasions, construction workers cracked open beers at the back of the 503 bus as stacks of low-rise condos passed by outside.
Langley remains very much a world away from Vancouver, something Point2Homes, a division of California data management firm Yardi Systems Inc., makes clear in ranking Langley Township Canada’s “least tempting” location for millennials.
Sure, unemployment is second lowest among cities surveyed and “you can drink some of the best wines in all of British Columbia” (unless you prefer beer), but Point2Homes notes the crime rate is high and housing affordability even worse. A Vancity report last year ranked Langley Township the 10th least affordable municipality in the region, contrasting sharply with the most affordable: Langley City.
And then there’s Fort Langley, which isn’t its own municipality but has aspirations – in materials distributed to media regarding Lily Terrace, a new project from Lanstone Homes Ltd. – to be “the Kerrisdale of the Fraser Valley.”
Billed the Fraser Valley’s “first luxury condominium development,” Lily Terrace is an infill project featuring 24 residential units at Church Street and Francis Avenue. Prices start at approximately $1 million, underscoring the challenges millennials who embraced the #donthaveamillion hashtag face. Frontline Real Estate Services Ltd. is handling sales.
Lily Terrace also includes approximately 17,500 square feet of retail and office space in two buildings, which will be available for occupancy by early 2019. Jamie and Cory Schreder of Royal LePage Wolstencroft Realty in Langley are handling leasing of the commercial space.
Boosting accessibility:
Whether or not a space is affordable is secondary to whether it’s even accessible, a consideration many B.C. residents face daily. Building codes can incorporate universal design principles, but until recently there wasn’t a single standard for rating how accessible a building really is.
SAFER, a standard for new home construction that reflects universal design principles, was formalized in 1998 and has been overseen since 2004 by the SAFERhome Standards Society of Vancouver. It maintains a database of SAFER-certified homes, but commercial properties fall outside its purview.
To address the issue, the province gave $5 million to the Rick Hansen Foundation of Richmond last year to “create a LEED-style [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] certification program that will identify buildings and developments that are leaders in accessible design.” The result was the Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification (RHFAC), a standardized rating system launched last fall to help building owners and occupants rate building accessibility.
“The rating system determines the accessibility of commercial, institutional and multi-family residential buildings,” program materials explain. “Buildings that pass will be recognized as being ‘RHF Accessibility Certified’ or ‘RHF Accessibility Certified Gold’ accredited.”
Provincial funding will allow the Rick Hansen Foundation to provide 1,110 buildings with ratings free of charge through March 31, 2019. Organizations with an RHFAC rating are then eligible to apply for up to $20,000 in funding for improvements to boost accessibility under the B.C. Accessibility Grants Program; applications must be received by December 31, 2018.
Raising awareness of the standard and making buildings more accessible might be part of the Rick Hansen Foundation’s mandate, but a recent report it undertook with the Conference Board of Canada underscores the real economic obstacles inaccessible buildings pose. According to the report, 57% of Canadians with physical disabilities who are unemployed feel more accessible workplaces would boost their job prospects. Perhaps even more significantly, 49% of Canadians with physical disabilities who are working feel they could be more productive if work environments were more accessible – a potential boost of $16.8 billion to the national GDP by 2030. •
