What Bill 44 Permits On Your Lot
The Province set a unit count, not a building. The Housing Statutes (Residential Development) Amendment Act, 2023, Bill 44, obliges local governments to permit, in what it calls a restricted zone, three units on parcels of 280 square metres or less, four above that, and six above 280 square metres within 400 metres of a prescribed frequent-transit stop. Parcels over 4,050 square metres fall outside it entirely. Bill 25, in 2025, widened the definition to catch any zone containing a parcel restricted to a house or duplex, and reset the clock: zoning bylaws by 30 June 2026, community plans by 30 June 2027. The site standards in the Province's policy manual, roughly 11 metres of height, 60 to 75 per cent coverage, are recommendations, not law. That distinction is the whole report.
The hearing is gone; the parking rule is narrower than advertised. Section 464 of the Local Government Act now prohibits a public hearing where a zoning bylaw permits residential development consistent with the official community plan, and for small-scale multi-unit housing bylaws generally; notice must still be given. The parking change is tighter than the headlines: the prohibition on requiring off-street residential parking attaches only to the six-unit transit tier, under section 481.3(5). Below it a municipality may still require more.
What the Township adopted. Township of Langley Zoning Bylaw 1987 No. 2500 Amendment (Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing) Bylaw No. 6020, adopted 18 November 2024, defines the use as "up to four (4) dwelling units, which may be attached or detached, located on a single lot." Four is the ceiling in the definition, the Township wrote no six-unit tier at all. It is a permitted use in R-1A (401.2), R-1B through R-1E (402.2), the R-CL zones (403.2 to 406.2), R-2 (410.2), SR-1 (301.2) and SR-3 (303.2), plus a schedule of comprehensive development zones; not in SR-2, SR-3A or SR-3B. Site standards were left largely alone: 35 per cent lot coverage, 45 where existing infill housing is retained, 9.0 metres of height. Parking is one space per unit, minimum two per lot, the Province suggested none near transit.
Six conditions decide the file, and one can be waived. Section 102 requires the lot to sit inside the urban containment boundary, be under 4,050 square metres, be serviced by both municipal sanitary sewer and municipal water, carry no heritage designation protection, sit outside the Willowbrook Transit-Oriented Area, and take access from something other than an arterial road identified in the Master Transportation Plan. Three units, not four, at 280 square metres or less. No hazard-lands exemption was written in. The arterial rule is the one with a route around it: the Township's first such project, 8813 Glover Road in Fort Langley, a heritage house retained beside a triplex, took that variance to council on 12 May 2025 and passed 8–1.
Form and character arrived seventeen months later. Council gave the small-scale multi-unit development permit area three readings on 12 March 2026 and adopted it on 27 April 2026 as Official Community Plan Amendment Bylaw No. 6116. A permit is required unless exemption conditions are met, review is delegated to staff, and the Township leans on sign-off by a third-party qualified design consultant, which allows a concurrent building permit. The guidelines want parking that does not dominate the frontage, visible entrances, daylight from two sides of every unit. Alongside runs an engineering capacity study: new connections deferred pending master plan work, and fire-flow shortfalls that cap density whatever the zone says.
The City took the wider reading, then rewrote the book. Bylaw No. 3284, given first and second readings on 3 June 2024, introduced plex-homes of up to four units in RS-1 and RS-2, six within 400 metres of a frequent bus stop, and removed resident parking minimums inside transit-oriented areas. It has since been superseded wholesale by Zoning Bylaw, 2025, No. 3300, adopted 9 March 2026. In the new R1 zone the maximum is four units, six within 400 metres of a frequent-transit stop, and, counter-intuitively, one dwelling plus one suite, garden suite or carriage home inside a transit-oriented area, where the Bill 47 regime governs instead. Minimum lot area 557 square metres, coverage 36 per cent, no parking required within 400 metres of a frequent stop. The City has that transit. The Township's bylaw does not contemplate it.
Then the charges, which is where the arithmetic usually ends. Development Cost Charges Bylaw No. 5897, re-adopted 3 November 2025, prices by achieved density rather than building type: Residential 2, above 15 and up to 44 units per hectare, at $58,004 per unit; Residential 3, above 44 and up to 74, at $52,532. A fourplex on a 700 square metre lot lands near 57 units per hectare, Residential 3. Above that sit Amenity Cost Charges Bylaw No. 6115, adopted 23 March 2026, at $13,584 per unit for ground-oriented multi-family, a category expressly naming small-scale multi-unit housing; Metro Vancouver's regional charge of $20,296 per townhouse unit; and a $1,000 school site charge. Section 561 of the Local Government Act would exempt a building of fewer than four units, but a council may override that, and section 5(c) of Bylaw No. 5897 does.
Permission is not feasibility, and land value follows feasibility. Township staff put the number of lots that could theoretically redevelop this way above 14,000. As of early May 2025 the Township had two applications and two inquiries; by March 2026 council was still describing a handful, in Fort Langley and Murrayville, plus a larger south Brookswood proposal. That gap is the market's own verdict. A lot carries a redevelopment bid only if a builder can execute: sewer and water at the frontage, adequate fire flow, geometry that takes four units inside 35 per cent coverage with two parking spaces and no arterial driveway, trees resolved under Tree Protection Bylaw 2019 No. 5478, and roughly $85,000 per unit in charges before a foundation is poured. Where one of those fails, the lot is worth what the house on it is worth.
Sourced from the Province's Small-Scale, Multi-Unit Housing Provincial Policy Manual and Site Standards and its Bill 25 SSMUH policy bulletin of 28 November 2025, the Township of Langley Zoning Bylaw 1987 No. 2500 as amended by Bylaw No. 6020 (sections 102, 301, 303, 401, 402, 403 and 410), the Township's small-scale multi-unit housing, development cost charge and amenity cost charge pages, Development Cost Charges Bylaw No. 5897 and Amenity Cost Charges Bylaw No. 6115, the City of Langley Zoning Bylaw, 2025, No. 3300 and its explanatory memorandum, the British Columbia Law Institute on the section 464 hearing changes, the Urban Development Institute's Township bulletins, and Langley Advance Times reporting of 12 May 2025, 13 March 2026 and 7 May 2026, all verified 25 August 2026. This report describes and informs; it is not legal, planning or financial advice, and a specific parcel, its servicing and its charges deserve specific verification. Do you want to know whether your lot clears all six of the Township's conditions, and what a builder would pay for it if it does?