The community of Bowen Island may be divided in many ways, but it also has many shared values: a love of nature, for example, or the appreciation for small, local businesses. It was with this observation and with the intention that commonalities would drive the conversation that Bowen Island architect Robyn Fenton opened up the first ever Bowen Housing Jam. Fenton asked participants to consider our community in 2026, with an extra 500 people looking for a place to live.
Divided into four tables, the “jam,” which followed a structure created by the Vancouver Design Nerds (VDN) asked people to consider the housing situations from varying perspectives pulled out of an envelope. “The Business Owner,” for example, has lived on Bowen for more than two decades and is concerned about housing because staffing challenges. “The Conservative” has lived on Bowen for decades in a lovely home, and is worried that the city is encroaching on island-life. “The Newcomer,” has a winter rental, a great job and a host of lovely new friends, but is worried that a lack of somewhere to live during the summer months will force a departure from the island.
“I was an empty nester,” says participant Eleanor Rosenberg, who says that as an islander looking to start her family, she is concerned about housing as it impacts the amount of cultural diversity in the community. “Giving people these personas was an effective strategy to at least create a sense of more diversity in the room.”
Rosenberg says she also appreciated the “jam” format for creating such a plethora of ideas, some of them more creative than realistic.
“My favourite was the idea of homes hanging from a theoretical future bridge between Bowen Island and the mainland,” says Rosenberg. “And the tree-house village, that was pretty fun too.”
Ideas that seemed to gain a lot of traction within the wider group included neighbourhoods centered around shared facilities, housing styles that brought younger and elder generations into close proximity, “tiny homes” and more village-style areas outside of Snug Cove.
Councilor Gary Ander was one of three municipal councilors who made it out to the Housing Jam, and proved to be a strong proponent of a multi-village Bowen Island. He blames the Official Community Plan for what he calls “Cove-centric” thinking, and suggested that revising the plan could be helpful for tackling the housing crisis.
“For example, the OCP does not currently allow modular homes,” says Ander. “That’s in place because modular homes imply trailers, but modular also means pre-fabricated, and really that is all that’s affordable to build right now.”
Ander says he was motivated to attend the meeting because he sees housing as the major issue on Bowen right now.
“How critical is it? It’s hard to know exactly, but we are losing talent, and every business on the island is bleeding for a lack of staff,” he says. “A lot of the ideas that came out of this [Housing Jam] were pretty idealistic, but things don’t happen quickly in real life. If we want things to develop on Bowen Island there’s a lot of unwinding that needs to be done. We could start by scrapping the minimum lot sizes, for example.”
Ander says when it comes to things that can be done quickly to improve the housing stock, the best option he can think of is allowing people to build secondary suites.
“As we were discussing this at council, I wanted there to be a maximum size of 1,000 square feet, that way we are dealing with housing as a necessity,” says Ander. “But in the end we decided on not having a maximum size for a secondary suite.”
Developer Wolfgang Duntz, from Bowen Island Properties, was also in attendance at the Housing Jam.
“A lot of what we’ve had on the drawing board for decades would tie into some of the ideas presented,” said Duntz. “Our rezoning application filed in 2009, for Parkview Slopes is the perfect example. We’ve got diversity in that plan that includes rentals, small places, a combination of live-work buildings, places for singles and young families – and rentals for families with pets.”
Duntz says one of the groups he worked with at the Housing Jam focused on the idea of a Tiny Home village.
“The Tiny Home concept is low hanging fruit, in my opinion,” says Duntz. “I’ve had people call me and ask if they could put a Tiny Home on a piece of our land, and we would be happy to do that accept that it is currently illegal. If these structured were to be legalized, it could be left up to the property owners to ensure that proper septic and well systems were in place, and the homes could be scattered throughout the island. The homes have a very modest footprint, and most often they would be single-person households. Single people, usually women, do so much volunteer work and if we want to keep the community alive then we need to make sure they have a place to live.”
Duntz says he is somewhat hopeful that progress will be made on diversifying housing on Bowen Island.
“This council, is at the very least willing to acknowledge there is a problem and something needs to be done,” he says. “But I’ve attended so many events like this [Housing Jam] since I came to Bowen 30 years ago, and they all come to the same conclusion – everyone is in favor of an idea, that is, until you actually propose it.”
Robyn Fenton says that the ideas presented at Saturday’s session will be written up, and perhaps, at some point, presented to council.
