Throughout 2024, the City of Surrey issued enough building permit approvals to produce a net housing gain of 6,297 units, achieving a new all-time record.
This exceeds the municipal government’s previous record of 5,932 units in 2019.
According to a news release this week, the permitting approvals for the new housing in 2024 also generated a record of over $2.8 billion worth of construction activity.
“I am proud of the work Council has done in streamlining our land development and permitting approvals. Council’s commitment in providing more housing will carry into 2025, as we continue to look for improvements and efficiencies in our approval process,” said Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke in a statement.
According to the municipal government, various new policies have enabled the expedited review of applications for various types of permits related to housing. This includes enabling the application and review process to overlap with some types of early construction works.
The City has new pilot programs for excavation building permits, which allows permits to be issued before the final adoption of rezoning and development permit issuance, and for early permit submissions, which enables building permits for new homes to be submitted after the preliminary layout approval process and before the final subdivision.
Additionally, the municipal government used the $96 million it received from the federal government’s Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) to catalyze and speed up more housing projects.
Using the HAF, the City reduced a very wide range of building development-related application fees by 50% for projects within 1.5 km of an existing SkyTrain station (Scott Road, Gateway, Surrey Central, or King George) or an existing RapidBus route (R1 King George Boulevard or R6 Scott Road RapidBus). This transit-oriented development incentive — the Rapid Transit Incentive Program — contributed to 2,380 net new home permits in 2024.
As well, also made possible by the HAF, the Non-Market Incentive Program advanced 180 below-market rental homes in 2024.
Both incentives combined catalyzed and expedited 2,560 net new homes, or 78% of the target goal of 3,300 units of these two programs.