Hear this story as reported on Tantramar Report:
Emilie McBride was celebrating Thursday afternoon, after watching as Tantramar council approved the third and final reading of a planning by-law change that will allow her to install a pre-built cedar home on her Sackville property.
Up until Thursday, homes in the former town of Sackville had to be at least 20 feet by 20 feet in dimensions, a restriction that prevented McBride from being able to get a building permit for the 14’ x 36′ foot cedar home she had selected from a Memramcook builder. Plan 360 planner Jenna Stewart explained to council in October that the rule was likely an aesthetic choice by former councils to prohibit homes that looked like mobile homes from being built outside of mobile home parks.
But as of Thursday, the planning rule has been changed. The minimum dwelling size limit is now 400 square feet, and that area can come in any shape.
“I’ve been waiting for this since October,” McBride told CHMA on Thursday evening, “and I will be at the Planning Commission’s office [Friday] morning with my building permit application. So that feels really good.”
McBride was pleased to see the final approval of the by-law on Thursday’s special meeting agenda. “I was expecting the meeting to be in mid-March, so this is a pleasant surprise,” says McBride.
Even so, the months-long process “was definitely a test of patience,” says McBride. “I just had to accept it as it is and not try to push the process, because it’s going to take the time it needs,” she says.
That said, “today feels pretty great,” said McBride. “It’s helping my housing situation,” says McBride. “But I’m also really glad that it can help other folks also with housing solutions, and people can live in smaller homes or less conventional sized homes.”
Garden suites rule up next for amendment, but no moves on infrastructure funding
Tantramar mayor Andrew Black says the by-law is “hugely important,” and shows that “council is in support of seeing innovation, at least from a by-law perspective,” when it comes to housing.
Black said the next by-law council will look at is a rule banning detached garden suites in the R1 residential zone, even though attached ‘granny suites’ are permitted.
In August 2023, Black struck the Mayor’s Roundtable on Housing, which in January, hosted a housing session in council chambers. Black said the roundtable “will be meeting next week to analyze a lot of the data that came out of that housing session. So hopefully we can pull stuff out of there that will be presented to council or come before council to address some of those concerns.”
Black said Tantramar had not yet approached any provincial or federal funding bodies on municipal infrastructure funding to support housing projects. The Freshwinds Eco-village Housing Cooperative has twice presented to Tantramar council, asking the municipality to seek funding to help with road and sewer infrastructure costs that would help make the 60-unit project on Fairfield Road viable.
“There’s always the opportunity for something in the works,” said Black Thursday. “If there’s an opportunity there to access funding, either through the federal or provincial government, then we, as a municipality, I feel that we’ll look at that.”
