A backyard suite approval spells promise for Halifax’s future

Bureaucratic Nimbleness in Halifax: A New Era of Good Governance

Blink and you’d have missed it, but a routine community council vote—passed with little fanfare—might be heralding a new era of bureaucratic nimbleness. It happened at the Halifax and West Community Council meeting on Dec 16.

The owner of 918 South Bland Street wants to put a secondary suite in his back yard, which—on the peninsula—is normally something that wouldn’t require a development agreement. But this part of the HRM is pretty close to Halifax’s grain elevator and back in 2003, that grain elevator exploded. Even though it’s unlikely it would explode again, more than most other cities, Halifax is keenly aware that just because something is not supposed to explode, doesn’t mean it won’t. Between the Halifax Explosion, the Bedford Magazine Explosion, and the grain elevator, we’re averaging an explosion in the HRM every 28.8 years, and it’s been 22 years since our last explosion.

The HRM is also aware that we are in a housing crisis and need housing now. At the same time, the city wants to create a comprehensive plan for the area around the elevator—aka a Secondary Municipal Planning Strategy—but those take time to put together. So to balance those two needs in the interim, the city has introduced the Halifax Grain Elevator Special Area of the Regional Centre Land Use Bylaw, which, a staff report explains, “applies additional requirements due to potential public safety risks associated with grain elevator operations.”

In their presentation, staff explained how the area’s development process uses municipal powers to ensure new builds don’t have windows facing the potential blast zone. Even though the city’s powers are limited to land use, this policy aims to ensure new buildings in danger zones are as safe as possible, conform to future planning, and allow housing to be built when—and where—we desperately need it.

It’s hard to write as breathlessly about good governance as the bad stuff because when governance goes right, it’s nowhere near as exciting. In a run-of-the-mill vote with no debate, council approved the backyard suite for South Bland Street. Halifax’s bureaucratic processes mitigated risks to public safety while allowing housing to be built as efficiently as possible within the limitations of their power, exactly as intended.