A virtual community meeting on carriage houses or secondary dwelling units is taking place in Quesnel tonight. (Monday)
Mayor Bob Simpson says a carriage house is one of three accessory dwelling units or ADU’s.
“The first kind is a secondary suite, so that is built inside the main house according to building code standards. The other is a carriage house, and a carriage house is something that is built into an existing outbuilding, so a garage or a large storage shed that then has a portion of that converted into a secondary suite if you will. And then the third is a stand alone accessory dwelling unit, or a secondary dwelling unit that’s purpose built. It’s separate from the main house and it fits the criteria for it in terms of access and egress and parking and so on.”
Simpson says the city received a grant from the Northern Development Trust that allows for two designs for both a carriage house and a secondary dwelling unit.
He says they’re looking for feedback from the public.
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“We are coming forward with preliminary concept designs that other people can now weigh in on and say could it look like this ? Or would it be better if this was re-oriented or how would this fit on my residential footprint ? “
Simpson says they also hope to take those designs and embed them onto the cities website to help people who are considering these types of units.
“To make it as easy as possible for people who want to build an accessory dwelling unit to be able to get all of the information they need, all the forms they need, and to get to yes as quickly as possible.”
Simpson says rural communities are struggling to get more housing available.
“We desperately need new stock. When you have a community like ours that is quite short of developable properties within the municipal footprint, one of the most efficient and effective ways to get more housing available in a fairly quick manner is these accessory dwelling units. To take your existing residential housing stock and add more units onto that same footprint.”
Tonight’s ZOOM meeting starts at 6.
People can pre-register at letsconnectquesnel.ca/adus.
