News and Features
A Home Renovation That Led to a Fight With City Hall
By Charles Campbell published Sep 1, 2012
For the sake of a tiny addition, a homeowner with a big disinclination
for bureaucracy takes his fight to city hall
There was no siren, but right away I knew I was busted. I could see the special parking stickers on the SUV as it bounced down my charming pothole-strewn Cedar Cottage laneway. I stood, covered in white house paint, as district building inspector Mike McDiarmid parked, walked up, and said, as nicely as if he were asking for directions, “Are you aware that you need a permit for the work you are doing here?”
“Yes, I am,” I said, trying my best not to throw up on him. He handed me the stop-work order with its severe red type, and took a picture of the back of my house, just days from appearing finished. “Where do we go from here?” I inquired. “You apply for a permit, and if everything is as it should be then you’ll get one.” I bid him good day and sent my carpenters home.
If everything is as it should be. So simple. As simple as taking money out of the bank.
Originally, I figured it would cost me $20,000 to add a 93-square-foot nook to the back of my 1912 Edwardian home, where I could sit and look at my new kitchen cabinets. And the City of Vancouver’s rules and regulations would add, what, another $10,000? So when my dream carpenter Robert and his affable partner Joe told me they could start Monday, I said sure.
That wasn’t the only reason I chose not to apply for a permit. There was the time the city shut off my water while I was having a shower, and the time street tree roots caused a major sewage backup into my basement suite and the city tried to charge me for the cost of determining it was their fault, and the time a city backhoe caused my water supply pipe to burst and they threatened to cut off the service if I didn’t fix it immediately. Once, they rezoned my property without bothering to tell me. When my neighbours applied for a permit to restore their house, the city tried to take 5.5 feet off the end of their lot such that, perhaps a century from now when they’ve done the same thing to everyone on the block, they can widen and pave the alley.
Of course, there is also the fact that I am a lazy, cheap, procrastinating, anti-authoritarian control freak.
After Joe called, I drew up the plans in one evening—clear, to scale, nothing fancy. It’s a kitchen nook with a wee covered porch to one side and a deck on top. It would replace a sprawling, ugly fire escape and deck built in the 1970s when the house was a ramshackle rental property. It would be smaller and smarter.
