The Land Use Bylaw Project: Mobile Home Lot Availability

In the past few years, there has been a growing number of mobile home owners looking to relocate to High Level from outside our community. The frequency of inquiries is steadily increasing – especially within the past year.

The trouble is we have a shortage of available lots in the community for mobile homes to be placed. This shortage may be a result of historic changes made to the R2 and R4 Land Use Districts, and the definitions for mobile and modular homes in the Town’s current Land Use Bylaw.

The current definitions of what constitutes a modular home, a mobile home, or a manufactured home don’t always align with our Land Use District designations or our Bylaw’s definitions. The fact is our definitions are simply out of date, and need to be revised to reflect the current mobile, modular and manufactured home market that has significantly advanced within the last 20 years.

The definitions we are proposing would be in line with the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) and Alberta Building Codes so that any CSA-recognized manufactured, modular, or mobile home would conform to existing regulations and, as a result, we would be better able to match them with the appropriate development district within our community.

In order to create more availability of lots for mobile homes, we are proposing two short-term options. The first would be to add mobile homes as a Discretionary Use in the R-2 Land Use District. This means that applicants would have to submit a Development Permit application, and the Town would make a decision on the application. As a Discretionary Use, part of the development process provides adjacent landowners or other residents with an opportunity to appeal an approved permit. For R-2 lots where mobile homes would not make sense, we’re proposing to rezone those to R-3, which would keep those existing developments (four-plexes) as conforming to our Bylaw.

The second option we are proposing involves the Dogwood Avenue cul-de-sac, which has several long, narrow lots that are suitable for the placement of mobile homes. In addition, the surrounding streets of Dragonfly Crescent, Driftwood Drive, Dewberry Road and Deer Ridge Drive are all zoned R4. Because of this, we think those lots could be better suited with a rezoning from R-1 to R-4.

Of course, all lots for potential rezoning are privately owned by residents or developers and we would not make any changes without extensive input from them.

The Town of High Level needs local solutions that work to solve local problems. For northern Alberta, modular and mobile homes are a popular choice when it comes to home ownership. And we recognize we should be doing everything we can to help support people in this region and elsewhere to make their home ownership dreams come true in our community.

As always, we want to work with property owners as we move through this process. Rest assured, if you own land that may be affected by any of these proposed changes, you will be hearing from our Planning department soon. In addition, the Town is also exploring some other long-term options for mobile home lot availability.  

The Town of High Level is currently reviewing and developing their Land Use Bylaw. As part of that process, local residents are strongly encouraged to take part in the process and help direct future development in High Level.

For more information, please contact Hayley Gavin, Land Use and Planning Manager, by phone at 780-502-0778 or by email at development@highlevel.ca.

A complete list of all proposed changes to the Land Use Bylaw is available HERE.