Who's Really Paying for Kelowna's Gold-Plated Infrastructure?
As development charges rise, UDI Okanagan examines how municipal infrastructure decisions are adding to the cost of new housing.
Who's really paying for the gold-plated park?
Spoiler: it's the future homeowner.
Here in Kelowna, the average home now costs over $1M. To qualify for that mortgage, you'd need to earn roughly $234K a year. The median family income? $120K. That's not an affordability gap, that's an affordability canyon.
Interest rates, land supply and construction costs all matter. But there's one conversation we keep avoiding: what municipalities are choosing to build, and who they're choosing to bill for it.
The Cost of Gold-Plated Infrastructure
Across BC, municipalities are approving capital projects with premium finishes and bespoke infrastructure that goes beyond what's functionally needed. Gold-plating. And much of it is being funded through Development Cost Charges (DCCs).
Kelowna's current DCC program is estimated at $1.33 billion. DCCs alone already represent 3–6% of the purchase price of a new home in this city. Across the region, Lake Country recently approved DCC increases of up to 75%. These charges add to the cost of delivering new housing and can ultimately be reflected in home prices.
DCCs are supposed to fund the infrastructure growth requires: roads, utilities, parks and amenities new development genuinely demands. They were never intended to be a blank cheque for municipalities to spec projects beyond what growth actually needs.
Who Decides, and Who Pays?
When there's no political cost to upgrading a project, when the bill goes to developers, and then home buyers, there's very little incentive for restraint.
That's the accountability gap in action: the decision-maker and the bill-payer are never the same person.
Councils can approve premium infrastructure, take credit with existing residents and taxpayers, and load the cost onto a development pro forma, where it becomes embedded in the cost of new housing. No political downside. No line on a tax notice. No one to answer to.
Rethinking How Municipal Infrastructure Is Funded
So here's a question: what if DCCs were capped at funding core growth-related infrastructure, and anything above that came from general taxation?
Suddenly, the calculus changes. Taxpayers would directly bear the cost of premium finishes and above-standard amenities. I'd wager that community appetite for gold-plated infrastructure drops considerably when it shows up on a property tax notice rather than a development approval.
This isn't about building substandard communities. It's about separating what growth must pay for from what everyone should pay for, and being honest about that distinction.
Value engineering isn't a dirty word. It's a discipline. And right now, that discipline is largely absent from how municipalities are planning capital projects while the affordability crisis deepens.
We can build great communities without pricing families out. But that requires political will, honest cost accountability, and a willingness to ask: does this project need to be this expensive?
If premium infrastructure had to go to a public vote, would the appetite for gold-plated amenities change?
Andrea Cashol is the Regional Director of UDI Okanagan.
