The Islands Trust committee that governs Denman wants to rewrite the rules for what you can build. The bylaws are 240 pages. Here is what they do, one picture at a time, with the page number for each. Then, separately and clearly labelled, what this site thinks of it. Public hearing: Tuesday 15 September 2026, 10:30 a.m., Denman Activity Centre gym.
The Housing Review in six panels. Panels 1 to 5 describe: every number is from the second-reading text of Bylaws 260 and 264, with the package page on the panel, and every quotation plays from the Trust’s own recording (260824D) at the second cited. Panel 6 is the publisher’s position and says so. Save any panel, or share the page: denmantown.org/housing-review.
1. For the first time, a limit on how big a house can be
Today there is no limit. The new bylaw says a house may not be bigger than 300 square metres, which is about 3,230 square feet, counting every floor to the outside of the walls but not decks, porches or cisterns. On rural lots the house and its suite share that 300 together. Houses that are already bigger stay as they are; the limit applies when you build, rebuild or add.
Big house, no; medium house, yes. A house over 300 m² (about 3,230 sq ft) could no longer be built. Bylaw 264 ss. 5.1(10), 5.2(10), package pp. 316, 319.
2. How many homes each lot may have
In the Residential zone: one home per hectare, never more than two. In the Rural zone: one main house per four hectares, never more than four, and every main house may have a suite inside it; a rural lot under four hectares gets one house plus one small second dwelling. Farmland and forest lots get one house, plus a suite or a small second dwelling. Staff say the total number of homes the island's zoning allows goes down by about 100.
A rural lot, before and after. Rural Residential (R2): one main house per 4 ha up to four, with one suite in each. Bylaw 264 s. 5.2(3)–(5), package p. 319; the 100-unit figure is staff's, minutes of 11 July 2026 in the same package.
3. The "co-housing" zone becomes "Land-Share Housing"
A special zone you must apply to get into. On a property of 35 hectares or more it allows up to 19 homes, each no bigger than 1,500 square feet, around a shared "common house" with the kitchen, laundry and meeting room, and with "housing affordability and long-term community benefit secured through appropriate legal mechanisms", which means covenants and housing agreements registered on the land. It applies to nobody unless they ask for it.
Nineteen small homes around a common house. Land-Share Housing (R3): ≥35 ha, up to 19 dwellings of ≤139.4 m², a common house of ≤279 m², affordability secured by legal agreement. Bylaw 264 s. 5.3, package pp. 322–323.
4. Tiny homes, RVs and yurts become legal homes
On a lot bigger than one hectare, screened from the neighbours, with a water supply and a legal septic, a tiny home on wheels, a yurt or an RV can be lived in as a home. It counts as one of the lot's homes, and it can never be rented to guests.
A tiny home counts as a home. 'Alternative dwelling unit' defined (package p. 289) and permitted under conditions, Bylaw 264 s. 3.9 (p. 308).
5. Renting out a whole house to visitors is banned everywhere
"The use of an entire dwelling unit for short-term accommodation, vacation rental or for the provision of transient lodging to paying guests is prohibited" in every zone. Renting a room in the home you live in, bed and breakfast style, stays allowed. The ticket for a whole-home rental is $500.
Whole house to visitors: no. A room in your own home: yes. Bylaw 264 s. 3.2(1), package p. 301; ticket amounts in Bylaw 265.
6. Water: cisterns for every new house, no groundwater pools, proof for subdivisions
A new house over 90 m² needs at least 18,000 litres of cistern before it gets a siting permit; a smaller one, 13,640 litres. Filling a swimming pool from a well is banned. Any subdivision meant for housing must prove water with "a climate-informed water management plan that demonstrates long-term aquifer sustainability".
A house comes with a tank. Bylaw 264 s. 3.10 (p. 308) and s. 3.2(2) (p. 301); OCP Policy 13 (Bylaw 260, p. 171).
7. Subdividing is over, and the density bank is gone
The minimum size for a new lot in the rural and land-share zones becomes 64 hectares, which means no new lots there without a rezoning. The plan's old "density bank", which let development rights move between properties, is deleted entirely. The plan now calls subdivision "one of the most negatively impactful mechanisms for increasing housing density".
One big lot stays one big lot. Bylaw 264 ss. 5.2(12), 5.3(11) (pp. 319, 323); Bylaw 260 ss. 16, 47–49 (pp. 170, 175).
8. What the rest of British Columbia is doing at the same time
Since 2023 the Province has required municipalities to allow three to six homes on ordinary residential lots, and to plan for the housing need their own reports measure. The federal government is paying cities to allow more homes per lot. Nothing in Denman's Housing Review does that, and it does not have to: the same 2023 law amended the Islands Trust Act so that the small-scale multi-unit duty (s. 481.3) is listed among the powers a local trust committee does not have. The Minister's reason, on the record in the Legislature on 20 November 2023, was the Trust's "preserve-and-protect mandate" and water. The Trust did not ask for that; Salt Spring's committee wrote asking to be included, and an amendment to include it failed. The full statutory reading is here, and the Denman committee's own words about the Province's housing-needs figures are on the record.
Same lot, two futures. Left: the direction the Province set for municipalities in 2023 (three to six homes on a residential lot, subject to servicing). Right: Denman's Residential zone under Bylaw 264 (one home per hectare, at most two).
Where this site stands: against the plan, for a simpler one
This is the publisher's position, not part of the description above. Credit where it is due: the review admits that Denman can hold more housing than the old density cap allowed, which retires the argument that the island "can't handle it". But the housing it permits comes wrapped in conditions that ordinary people and ordinary lenders cannot use. The Land-Share zone requires shared buildings, cooperative ownership and affordability locked in by covenant; a bank does not write a mortgage on a home whose resale price is capped by agreement, so the homes it imagines are financed, if at all, by grants. And a limit on the size of a house is a limit on who is allowed to live well here. It is a tax on families, on multi-generational households, and on anyone whose house is also their work. It is class policy dressed as water policy.
What this site wants is what the Province and the country have already decided: allow more homes per lot, and let the septic and water rules decide what a lot can carry. No new zone, no covenant, no committee deciding how big your kitchen may be. Water and sewage are real limits, and the Health Act and the subdivision rules already enforce them. Everything else in this plan is a preference being turned into law.
What you can do
Come to the public hearing on 15 September 2026 at 10:30 a.m., Denman Activity Centre gym, 1111 Northwest Road, and say what you think. Written comments to the Local Trust Committee before the hearing go on the record too.
Read the actual text: the 24 August 2026 agenda package on the Trust's Denman LTC page, from page 141. The clause-by-clause version is here.
Sources: Islands Trust, Denman LTC agenda package, 24 August 2026 (DE-LTC_2026-08-24_RM_AGD.pdf), pp. 141–383; Bylaw 260 (OCP amendment) and Bylaw 264 (Land Use Bylaw) second-reading text; draft minutes of the community information meeting of 11 July 2026 (same package); Local Government Act s. 481.3 (small-scale multi-unit housing, municipalities). Numbers are from the second-reading draft and will be updated if the bylaws change; every correction will be noted on this page.