Banff's historic backyard cabins have renewed relevance amid housing crunch

Travel back in time, and Banff residents were making housing work for them by building backyard cabins — even if they weren't legal — for workers and tourists. 

Today, Ottawa is looking for such creative solutions and more as it challenges municipalities to come up with ways to tackle the country's housing crisis — and Banff's plans might bring back that now lost gentle density as part of the fix. 

The municipality sits on a fixed land base, with no space for suburbs to sprawl, and the development of new housing has plateaued.

Almost all residential land, 98.5 per cent, is already developed. But officials say the town has a 700- to 1,000-unit housing shortage it wants to make up. 

"It's really about trying to incentivize people to make the most of their properties," Dave Michaels said. 

There's money on the table from the federal government, thanks to the housing accelerator fund. Banff has a proposal in the works. 

The town is looking at a whole suite of options. Michaels said they have proposed financial incentives and tactics to tax vacant or underdeveloped land and want to ease some planning requirements. 

"All options are on the table," Michaels said. "There's a lot of changes that we really think will incentivize a lot of development that's kind of waiting in the wings that hasn't been possible with the increases to construction costs."

Among the ideas under consideration are eliminating parking minimums, bumping up building height maximums, and allowing accessory dwellings, such as secondary and backyard suites.

Accessory dwellings are a fitting call to the past. 

In the 1930s, Banff was a town of so-called gentle density — officials did a survey and found 400 cabins and tent houses in backyards. 

Today, that would make up about 10 per cent of the town's housing, estimated Kathleen Gallagher, a development planner with the town. 

The number is even more interesting in today's context because, if all of the town's measures are approved by council, and Parks Canada next year, Gallagher said they hope to spur the development of 400 to 500 new units three years after the new policy and incentives come into effect. 

"I think it's neat that we're seeing this same story play out and the same type of solutions," Gallagher said.