Small-scale multi-unit housing is the province's name for the housing that sits between a single detached house and an apartment block. Bill 44, passed in 2023, required local governments to permit it in zones that had previously allowed only one or two homes. The province set a floor. What matters on any given lot is what the municipality built on top of it, and the nine below did not do the same thing.
Checked 2026-09-01 · A description of the provincial framework, not advice about your property. What binds your lot is your municipality's bylaw.
Every row comes from that city's own bylaw, read on the date in the last column. Where a municipality uses more than one word for the same building — and 6 of these 9 do — the others follow the leading one in grey. "Favourable" counts the zone codes where our reading is favourable, and "conditional" those favourable in principle where lot dimensions decide it. Both are our reading of the bylaw, not a classification the city publishes. "Zone codes mapped" is every code in our lookup table for that city, which can include commercial, industrial, agricultural and site-specific codes, so it is not necessarily a count of residential zones, and favourable over mapped is not a share of them. A city with no public parcel feed can still be answered from its rules, but not from a read of your specific lot.
| Municipality | Calls them | Favourable | Conditional | Zone codes mapped | Parcel data | Rules read |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burnaby | laneway homes | 1 | 2 | 26 | Yes | 2026-08-02 |
| Coquitlam | garden cottages, carriage houses, laneway homes | 2 | 2 | 10 | Yes | 2026-08-02 |
| Delta | coach houses, garden suites | 13 | 0 | 19 | Yes | 2026-08-02 |
| Langley City | garden suites, carriage homes | 1 | 0 | 8 | Yes | 2026-08-02 |
| Langley Township | coach houses, laneway homes | 10 | 4 | 22 | Yes | 2026-08-02 |
| New Westminster | carriage houses, laneway houses | 2 | 5 | 15 | Yes | 2026-08-02 |
| Richmond | coach houses | 9 | 4 | 50 | No public feed | 2026-08-06 |
| Surrey | coach houses, garden suites | 4 | 5 | 52 | Yes | 2026-08-02 |
| Vancouver | laneway houses | 6 | 12 | 55 | Yes | 2026-08-03 |
Counting zones is not the same as counting lots: a zone that covers most of a city and one that covers three blocks each count once. The counts describe our reading of each city's zone codes, not how much land is eligible.
Take it. Republish it, chart it, or check our reading against your own — it is released under CC BY 4.0, which asks one thing in return: say where it came from and link back, so whoever reads it can see the dates and follow the sources. Both files are generated from the same data as the table above, so they cannot drift from it.
KYRAX Laneway Homes. “SSMUH implementation in nine Lower Mainland municipalities.”
Bylaws read to 2026-08-06.
https://kyraxlaneway.com/laneway-homes/bc-ssmuh-rules/
Found a row that is wrong? We would much rather be corrected than cited incorrectly — tell us which municipality and what it should say at info@kyraxlaneway.com and we will re-read the bylaw.
The province's own list:
The second item is the one this site is about. A detached accessory dwelling unit is what most people mean by a laneway home or a garden suite, and it is named in the provincial framework rather than tolerated at the edge of it.
Local governments had to update their bylaws by 30 June 2024 to accommodate the requirements, unless they were granted an extension. That deadline is why almost every bylaw on this site was rewritten in 2024 or 2025.
Secondary suites and accessory dwelling units are allowed province-wide in single-family residential zones where three-to-six-unit zoning is not required. This is the clause a laneway home or garden suite usually sits under.
Three to four units must be permitted on a parcel zoned exclusively for single-family or duplex use, where the parcel is wholly or partly inside a regional urban containment boundary, or in a municipality with a population over 5,000. The minimum is three units on parcels of 280 m2 or smaller and four on parcels larger than that. Some exemptions apply.
Six units must be allowed near frequent bus service, on single-family and duplex lots larger than 280 m2 in a municipality or regional district of at least 5,000 people. A frequent transit bus stop is defined by the service level at the stop, not by distance alone.
The province passed Bill 25, the Housing and Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, 2025, to make implementation more consistent across local governments. If a municipality's rules changed again after its first SSMUH bylaw, this is often why.
Knowing your municipality had to permit small-scale housing does not tell you whether a suite fits behind your house. The free check reads the zoning for your address and tests whether one does.
Small-scale multi-unit housing is the province's name for the housing that sits between a single detached house and an apartment block. Bill 44, passed in 2023, required local governments to permit it in zones that had previously allowed only one or two homes. Local governments had to update their bylaws by 30 June 2024 to accommodate the requirements, unless they were granted an extension. That deadline is why almost every bylaw on this site was rewritten in 2024 or 2025.
It means your municipality had to permit small-scale housing where it previously did not, and the province lists detached accessory dwelling units — garden suites and laneway homes — among the forms that count. It does not mean one fits on your lot. The bylaw sets the size, the setbacks and the servicing, and those are what decide it.
No, and that is the most useful thing on this page. The table above shows how many of each municipality's zone codes we read as favourable, what it calls a detached suite, and whether it publishes parcel-level data at all. The words, the counts and the dates all differ.
Secondary suites and accessory dwelling units are allowed province-wide in single-family residential zones where three-to-six-unit zoning is not required. This is the clause a laneway home or garden suite usually sits under.
Three to four units must be permitted on a parcel zoned exclusively for single-family or duplex use, where the parcel is wholly or partly inside a regional urban containment boundary, or in a municipality with a population over 5,000. The minimum is three units on parcels of 280 m2 or smaller and four on parcels larger than that. Some exemptions apply.
Six units must be allowed near frequent bus service, on single-family and duplex lots larger than 280 m2 in a municipality or regional district of at least 5,000 people. A frequent transit bus stop is defined by the service level at the stop, not by distance alone.
The province passed Bill 25, the Housing and Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, 2025, to make implementation more consistent across local governments. If a municipality's rules changed again after its first SSMUH bylaw, this is often why.
The rules change at every city line. These pages are built from the same bylaw reads.
This page describes the provincial framework and each municipality's implementation as they read on the dates shown. Legislation and bylaws change, and only the municipality can approve a build.