Much like its predecessor, the multiplex has plenty to offer Homeseekers looking for housing that isn’t a condo or a detached home. As a ground-oriented, family-focused housing type, one key benefit is its ability to accommodate multi-generational living. Imagine being able to live with your grandparents, relatives and even friends all near each other, but in separated units. Everyone gets their own slice of the property to use as they wish, but they can also share in childcare, gardening, maintenance tasks and other jobs.
Multiplexes: the right place, right time.
Inside a multiplex home under construction.
“A condo may only fit for a certain period of time with your family and your lifestyle,” says Summer, Projects Coordinator at Costar Construction. “I think a multiplex is in the middle and it really helps expand the time that you might be living in the home so that you can be more connected with the community, [and have] space for family members and build stronger roots.”
Daniel Winer, Co-Executive Lead, Industry Activation at Small Housing BC, agrees, stating that, “As long as housing affordability remains out of the reach of the average working class human being in Vancouver, Surrey, Burnaby, we need to continue building housing that meets the needs of that general public. So, I'm not going to say condos are inherently better or worse than multiplexes. I would say that condos serve a different type of audience.”
The opportunity to zoom out and focus on community is another strength of multiplex living. Katharine Olson, Founder of Groundbreaking Strata, says that, “I would just encourage us as a group – with all these multiplexes coming – to scan up a little higher and see how all our little dots are moving around the properties together and then even higher, how are all of our little dots moving around the community.”
That is, beyond sharing responsibilities with the residents of your own property, multiplexes help build stronger communities where neighbours look out for each other. The dream of many families, of a safe neighbourhood in which their children can play outside and everyone keeps tabs on them together, is much easier when everyone is already used to it.
Finding the missing middle.
This leads to the other major benefit of multiplexes: increasing the supply of “missing middle” housing in the Lower Mainland. This much-discussed segment of the market refers to housing that lies between single-family detached homes and high-rise condo towers. Think townhomes, row homes, low- and mid-rise apartment buildings and, of course, multiplexes.
Although Homeseekers often state they prefer this type of housing, particularly those raising families, it has been in short supply. Zoning regulations and development patterns have tended to favour the extremes of the market: detached houses and high-rise condos. Multiplexes are an opportunity to finally meet this need, especially after BC passed Bill 44. This legislation is intended to increase the supply of multi-unit housing on former single-family-only lots.
“Previously, zoning restricted to a single-family house or a single-family house with one or two suites, now four to six families can come live on these properties in the neighbourhoods that are close to schools, close to the homes they grew up in, have local amenities nearby and no longer have to move further east to find the type of housing they're looking for,” says Bill Laidler, President of Laidler Capital. “The homeowners are able to find new homes in the same neighbourhoods that they lived in, and their families are able to come move closer to where they grew up.”
Multiplexes have seen pushback, too – like the Vancouver Special did decades ago. Though the lens of nostalgia may have obscured the backlash, they faced similar complaints of boxy designs and poor aesthetics that multiplexes are seeing now. But, as with the Vancouver Special, these complaints are something designers and builders are aware of.
“To some degree the original BC box that was built 40 and 50 years ago could be considered aesthetically unpleasing as well, but it served an important purpose in the housing industry,” says Laidler.
He also notes that, “The neighbourhood concern about multiplexes not being aesthetically pleasing is shared by many home buyers, where home buyers are moving towards quality-designed product over boxy, tall floor plans and those product types are not being absorbed in the marketplace and are proving not to be profitable, causing the market to move away from them naturally without needing design guidelines.” Indeed, “design guidelines” are what stopped the Vancouver Special in 1985. Sweeping changes in zoning made them impossible to build.
Multiplexes, the Vancouver Special, laneway houses, basement suites, condos and other housing types other than the single-family detached home (and even then, the “wrong” kind of detached home) have all seen their own controversies. But the City and region would be impossible to imagine without them today. Multiplexes may step into that role, too, especially as Homeseekers and even the housing industry look for options beyond condos and detached homes.
An example of a multiplex.
The future may very well be multiplexes.
Olson thinks that, in the future, “There's going to be some pushback, there's going to be some amendments, they'll do some things about setbacks but ultimately, multiplexes are coming, like you're not going to stop them.”
Ultimately, for Homeseekers who move into multiplexes, the multi-generational living aspect stands out above all else. “I'm quite the social one in the family, and I like to know all my neighbours,” says Hajeir Mazinani, who is set to move into Costar’s WEKillarney multiplex. “And I even know the units nearby. I'm quite family-oriented. I like that community feel… I do feel that's a huge plus, where you have a tight-knit [area] of families all in one place, and that you can kind of build a relationship with them.”
