Rick Ilich, Founder & CEO of Townline: A Base-Hit Builder Still Showing the Way

I wanted to pivot to your role as the chair of UDI, which is the Urban Development Institute.

It's the largest, most prominent advocacy group for developers throughout British Columbia.

And you have consistently been one of the clearest voices calling for planners to stop acting as, as you've said, policy police.

Are there any deregulation wins that you're actually seeing from the province or the municipal level right now? And where is the resistance still the strongest?

It's a challenge because the cities have become addicted to the regulation and most regulation has costs wrapped around it or whether they're fees or levies and or costs due to the ideology baked in the policy.

And so to dismantle a policy you're impacting someone's lane their role you know and so so the folks that are in those lanes that have been put there by cities they're good people they're they're doing their job they're protecting their policy but that's where they've lost the plot right you know it's if we really believe in can we create affordable housing or can we reduce the cost of housing you sure the heck we can but right right now in this particular market the only thing getting in the way is government and all

their extraction.

You said 35, 40% of the costs for, say, a Vancouver tower is driven by government, fees, codes, and ideology.

What can we do? Which lane do we need to remove? There's so many.

Where do

we begin? Yeah.

You know, but the constant tweaking of codes, you know, by the time you finish a building, the likelihood of you being able to break ground on that building tomorrow is zero.

They've already tweaked something, you know, and you're, you know, we've been, Canada's been chasing the net zero agenda and energy efficiency, which are all good things, but consumers can't afford it.

I know you can argue that you can't afford not to do it, but the consumer cannot afford to pay rent on that.

So what do you do? The government's got to be more responsible in their policies and their actions.

And if they want affordability baked into housing and they want these ideologies baked into their resume, then they should be planning on paying for it.

but the only people paying for it are the developer and or landlord and the consumer so it's asked backwards if you go to so so that should be looked at more aggressively and it'll be all sorts of noise as to why you shouldn't do that all the fees wrapped around these things the cities are relying on that cash because they're no longer accommodating most of the needs and asks through property taxes but they probably should stop saying yes.

And to all these special advocacy groups that want something shiny and if it buys me a thousand votes, I'll do it.

You gotta be more responsible with our money as taxpayers and you've got to help people understand the limitations of government versus just always nodding your head yes, and then being criticized for inaction.

Los Angeles, who's got huge housing issues and affordability issues, is finally doing something about it.

So there is a program down there, and I have shared it with some of the governments here, that if you design within current zoning, you do not have to go for a development permit.

You can go straight to building permit.

And they will bring all the infrastructure to the site at their cost, the city's cost, roads, hydro.

You will be prioritized and permitting.

You can do what you want with parking, with or without it.