British Columbia (province): Bill 44 — Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing (SSMUH)

For decades, the choice of how many homes could sit on a residential lot in British Columbia belonged to each individual city council. Most of them used that power to protect single-family neighbourhoods: one detached house per lot, sometimes a duplex, and little else. As BC's population grew and home prices in Metro Vancouver became some of the least affordable in the world, that patchwork of restrictive local zoning came to be seen by the provincial government as a brake on housing supply. Every proposal to add a few homes had to survive a rezoning application and, often, a contentious public hearing where a handful of nearby residents could pressure council to vote it down.

The province's answer was to stop asking cities to choose and start telling them what to permit. The flagship piece of that effort is Bill 44, formally the Housing Statutes (Residential Development) Amendment Act, 2023. The government introduced it on November 1, 2023, and it received royal assent on November 30, 2023 (MLT Aikins). The reform is known by the name of the housing type it legalizes: Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing, or SSMUH, the row homes, triplexes, fourplexes, and townhouses that fall between a single house and a large apartment building (BC Gov News). The decision to mandate this province-wide, rather than leave it city by city, is the heart of the story. The province concluded that local control was the obstacle, so it overrode local control. That choice, and the resistance it provoked, runs through everything below.

Bill 44 sets a floor on density that local governments cannot drop below. On a lot that was previously zoned for single-family or duplex use, a municipality must now permit, by right, a minimum number of homes that scales with lot size and proximity to transit. The province's own requirements are specific: a minimum of three housing units on parcels that are 280 square metres or smaller; a minimum of four units on parcels greater than 280 square metres; and a minimum of six units on lots over 280 square metres that sit within roughly 400 metres of a stop with frequent bus service (Province of British Columbia).

"Frequent" transit has a precise legal meaning here. It refers to a stop served by at least one route running, on average, every 15 minutes or better between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays, with a somewhat lighter standard on weekends (Province of British Columbia). That definition matters because it is what unlocks the six-unit tier. A lot a short walk from a busy, frequent bus route carries a higher minimum than an otherwise identical lot a few blocks away on a quiet street.

Two other features make the law bite harder than a simple density increase. First, near that frequent transit, local governments cannot require any on-site parking for these homes, removing one of the most common ways a city can quietly make a small project impossible to fit on a lot. Second, the requirements apply to local governments with a population greater than 5,000 and to land inside their urban containment boundaries, so the rule reaches the cities and towns where most British Columbians actually live, not just the largest metros (Province of British Columbia).

Bill 44 did more than raise the unit count. It also went after the procedural step that had killed countless modest projects: the public hearing. Under the reform, a local government is no longer permitted to hold a public hearing for a rezoning when the proposed development is consistent with the community's official community plan, the long-range land-use document that the city has already adopted (MLT Aikins). The reasoning is direct. If a project already matches the plan the council formally approved, re-litigating it in front of a hostile room adds delay and uncertainty without adding democratic value. Removing that step takes away one of the most reliable tools neighbours had used to slow or stop housing.

The law also dealt with the smallest unit of all. It made secondary suites a province-wide right. Across BC, in single-family residential zones where the three-to-six-unit rule does not apply, a homeowner is now allowed at least one secondary suite or one detached accessory dwelling unit, such as a laneway home (Province of British Columbia). Taken together, these three changes, the unit minimums, the end of public hearings for plan-consistent projects, and the universal secondary-suite right, are what people mean when they say Bill 44 ended single-family-only zoning in British Columbia.

The province did not just pass the law and hope. It set a hard deadline and tracked who met it. Most municipalities were required to amend their zoning and related bylaws to comply by June 30, 2024, with a later deadline of December 31, 2024 for certain smaller and more rural communities (BC Gov News). For a reform that rewrote the zoning rules of an entire province in a matter of months, the question was always going to be how many cities actually complied versus how many dug in.

The numbers tell a story of broad, if grudging, adoption. As of July 25, 2024, just after the main deadline, 162 of 188 local governments had adopted compliant bylaws (BC Gov News). By September 16, 2024, that figure had risen to 172 of 188, or more than 91 percent of local governments (BC Gov News). The province handled the stragglers through a mix of carrots and sticks. It granted 21 extensions to communities that needed more time, typically for legitimate reasons such as infrastructure upgrades or wildfire and evacuation impacts, while it declined 7 extension requests outright (BC Gov News). Communities whose extension requests were refused, including the Township of Langley and Mount Waddington, were given 90 days from the date of the rejection letter to comply (BC Gov News). The message was that delay was negotiable but refusal was not.

The clearest test of whether the province meant business came from one of Metro Vancouver's wealthiest municipalities. The District of West Vancouver pushed back hard. On May 27, 2024, just weeks before the deadline, West Vancouver council voted against adopting the SSMUH bylaw amendments, effectively refusing to comply (Urban Development Institute).

The province responded with the enforcement machinery it had built into the law. On July 25, 2024, the District received a ministerial notice of non-compliance, which required it to amend its zoning bylaw in line with the provincial directives within 30 days (Urban Development Institute). The unspoken backstop was a ministerial order: if the council still refused, the minister had the authority to impose the changes over the council's head. Faced with that prospect, the council reversed course. On August 12, 2024, West Vancouver council gave first, second, and third reading and final adoption to the zoning bylaw amendments needed to align with Bill 44 (Urban Development Institute). A council that had formally voted no in May had adopted the rules in full by August. For everyone watching, the lesson was that the province would not let a single holdout opt out, no matter how affluent or politically influential.

Bill 44 did not arrive alone. The province paired it with Bill 47, the Transit-Oriented Areas legislation, which received royal assent on the same day, November 30, 2023 (Province of British Columbia). Where Bill 44 sets a floor of three to six small homes on ordinary residential lots, Bill 47 sets a far higher floor on the land closest to major transit. Under B.C. Reg. 263/2023, the land near a SkyTrain or passenger-rail station is divided into tiers by distance: within 200 metres of the station, municipalities must permit a minimum density of 5.0 floor area ratio and up to 20 storeys; between 200 and 400 metres, a minimum of 4.0 and up to 12 storeys; and between 400 and 800 metres, a minimum of 3.0 and up to 8 storeys (CanLII, B.C. Reg. 263/2023). Floor area ratio simply means the total floor area allowed compared with the size of the lot, so a 5.0 ratio permits a building with five times the floor area of the lot it sits on. Together, Bills 44 and 47 form a single system: gentle density everywhere, and tall density near rapid transit.

The framework has since been tightened. In November 2025, the BC Legislature passed Bill 25, the Housing and Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, 2025 (BC Laws). Bill 25 expanded and clarified the original SSMUH rules, including closing loopholes some municipalities had used to count existing permissions toward the minimum, and it set a new compliance deadline of June 30, 2026 for local governments to bring their bylaws into line with the updated requirements (BC Laws). The reform, in other words, is not a one-time event but a moving target that the province continues to extend.

Bill 44 sits among the most ambitious zoning mandates anywhere, and seeing it next to comparable reforms makes its character clear. The closest parallel is just across the border. Washington State's House Bill 1110, signed into law in May 2023, requires its larger cities to permit fourplexes on nearly all residential lots, and sixplexes within a quarter-mile of major transit stops or when some units are kept affordable (Sightline Institute). The structure is almost a mirror of BC's: a baseline of four homes everywhere, rising to six near frequent transit. Both governments concluded that a provincial or state mandate, not city-by-city persuasion, was the only way to move the needle.

New Zealand went down the same road earlier and even more aggressively. Through its Medium Density Residential Standards, central government required high-growth councils to allow up to three homes of up to three storeys on most sites without a resource consent, the New Zealand equivalent of getting individual planning approval (Environment Guide NZ). Like BC, New Zealand removed the discretionary approval step that lets neighbours and councils slow projects down. Against these peers, British Columbia is at the leading edge: it mandates a higher ceiling near transit than Washington in its small-scale tier, layers a separate high-rise mandate on top through Bill 47, and backs the whole thing with real enforcement, as West Vancouver discovered.

Here is the part that matters most for an owner or builder in British Columbia, and it is the part the headlines tend to skip. Bill 44 gives almost every single-family lot in a city over 5,000 people the legal right to hold three, four, or six homes. A legal right is not the same as a profitable project. The right to build is now province-wide; the projects that actually make financial sense are a much smaller subset. This is the same gap that played out south of the border, where California's SB 9 was projected to make roughly 700,000 homes feasible on paper, yet permitted only about 140 units statewide in 2023, because the math did not work for most owners once costs and financing were counted (CalMatters).

Whether a BC lot actually pencils depends on factors the zoning map cannot tell you. Land cost is the first filter: a lot that already trades at a premium because of its location may be too expensive for the rent or sale price that three or four new units can support. Construction cost is the second: site conditions, slope, soil, tree protection, servicing, and the design needed to fit several units onto one parcel all swing the budget. Financing is the third: a small builder or homeowner has to find a lender willing to fund a multi-unit build, and rates and lending terms move that calculation constantly. And design is the fourth: a lot can technically permit six units yet have a shape, a setback requirement, or an existing house that makes a six-unit building impractical to lay out. Stack these together and the share of lots where a Bill 44 project is genuinely worth building is far smaller than the share where it is merely legal.

The practical takeaway for BC owners and builders is simple: screen the specific lot before spending real money. Confirm its size against the 280-square-metre threshold, check its distance to a frequent-transit stop to see whether the six-unit and no-parking tier applies, and only then run the land, construction, financing, and design numbers for that exact parcel. The province handed out the right to build small-scale multi-unit housing nearly everywhere. The job of figuring out where it actually makes sense still falls to you, one lot at a time. That lot-by-lot screen is exactly the discipline that separates a deal that works from a right that sits unused.