Oak Bay Zoning and SSMUH Rules

The permissions apply in the R 1 through R 5 zones.

Oak Bay's six unit transit tier is not confirmed in the District's published infill material. Do not price a six unit project in Oak Bay without confirming it with the District for your specific lot.

At Committee of the Whole on 16 May 2024, a motion to apply the large lot exemption to lots outside the Uplands was defeated. Council resolved instead that staff not exercise the exemption and that permitted density increase to up to 4 units across all lots.

The Uplands Neighbourhood Association says the same thing on its own housing page: at least 4 dwelling units can now be built on any lot in Oak Bay, including lots in the Uplands neighbourhood.

The difference in the Uplands is a second, discretionary approval, and it comes from a private Act rather than the zoning bylaw.

The Oak Bay Special Powers Act, 1935 empowers Council to regulate the class, minimum cost and location of buildings in the Uplands, to approve site and architectural design, and to restrict further subdivision. That power runs through Uplands Regulations Bylaw No. 3545, which says no building, addition or exterior alteration may be erected until its siting and architectural design have been submitted to and approved by Council. It is a formal application stream under the Development Application Procedures Bylaw, and where bylaws conflict, the Uplands Regulations prevail.

So the answer for an Uplands lot is not that density is forbidden. The density is permitted and the design is discretionary. That is a different risk, and it needs to be priced as one: in time, in design cost, and in the chance that Council asks for changes.

Uplands lots also carry their own side setback rules, which scale with the breadth of the lot, from 3.0 to 4.6 metres a side and 6.0 to 12.2 metres in total.

Principal buildings can reach 3 storeys including the basement. Accessory dwelling units are capped at 2 storeys, 6 metres building height and 7.5 metres to the roof.

Paved surface in the front yard is capped at 40 percent. One driveway is permitted unless the frontage exceeds 30.5 metres.

Parking is 2 spaces for a single detached home, 1 space per unit for three or more units in R 1 to R 3, and 0.5 spaces per unit in R 4 and R 5.

The Tree Protection Bylaw protects Garry oak, arbutus, Pacific yew, black hawthorn, shore pine and Pacific dogwood over 4 centimetres in diameter, and other species over 30 centimetres. On many Oak Bay lots the trees shape the site plan before anything else does.

Oak Bay removed the development permit requirement for infill, so an ordinary infill project outside the Uplands is building permit only.

Henderson and North Oak Bay are the strongest candidates for infill. Many parcels there run 600 to 900 square metres, and they carry fewer heritage constraints than the south of the District.

Heritage designated lots anywhere in Oak Bay are held to 2 units unless a Heritage Revitalization Agreement increases it, so check the heritage status of a lot before you check anything else.

Zoning is only half the answer. The provincial policy manual states that existing section 219 covenants are not affected by the small scale multi unit housing legislation, and that a valid statutory building scheme registered on title limiting a property to one dwelling unit takes precedence over the density the zoning permits.

In a neighbourhood as old as the Uplands, with deed restrictions that predate the municipality taking it over, that matters more than most places. Order a title search on the PID before you price density into an offer.

There is a full post on what a covenant or building scheme does to your density.