With federal funding, city says it will exceed its goal of 42,000 new housing units by next year

A partnership with the federal government will see new homes for 100,000 Calgarians, as the City of Calgary announced Wednesday it has surpassed housing benchmarks set through the federal Housing Accelerator Fund.

The original target, set alongside the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., aimed for just under 42,000 new housing units underway by fall of 2026. That target was later revised to 42,667 new units.

Since receiving a $228.5-million federal investment in October 2023, the city says it has started construction on 44,276 new units — 104 per cent of the revised targets.

“At the time, there’s a lot of people who wondered if that target was maybe too ambitious. Today, I’m proud to stand here and say not only have we met the target, we have exceeded it more than a year ahead of schedule,” Mayor Jyoti Gondek said at the site of a development recently approved through the fund.

“These are futures that are made possible. It’s a powerful reminder of what happens when different orders of government come together, where we collaborate — great things can happen — and that when we put funding in the hands of municipalities, we take action,” Gondek said.

Alongside the funding, the City of Calgary launched the Home is Here housing strategy. While the plan is multi-faceted, it was highlighted by the longest public hearing in Calgary’s history, discussing a blanket rezoning bylaw that made residential grade-oriented infill the default zoning citywide. 

The controversial changes allowed the redevelopment of single detached dwellings into duplexes or rowhouses without first needing to obtain a land-use redesignation from the city, an expensive process that could take several months. 

Gondek specified that the original federal funding through the Housing Accelerator Fund had no ties to the zoning changes. She said, “when we received our funding from the federal government, there was no stipulation that we had to pass any type of rezoning. There was none. What we chose to do when it comes to rezoning is something that council took on, on its own.”

Reid Hendry, chief housing officer of the City of Calgary, said the changes did not result in any housing starts that would not have been built regardless. 

“What really that process has done is speed-up housing,” he said. 

“I believe those numbers are north of several thousand units — that really would have happened anyways — they just now happen four to six months faster,” said Hendry.

In March, Calgary was awarded an additional $22.8 million, thanks to “high performance under the HAF program thus far.” Hendry said that, amongst other targets, the city’s ability to quickly react to the housing issue was a driver of receiving that additional funding. 

That funding will feed into two new initiatives, Backyard Suites and Accessory Dwellings Program, and the Downtown Complete Community Housing Program. The former will assist homeowners in developing secondary dwellings on their property, referred to by Gondek as a “gentle density” initiative.

The latter includes several goals, including the conversion of downtown office space into housing.

Housing targets in the program were further broken down by housing type. “We’ve achieved 103 per cent of our multi-unit target and 152 per cent of our multi-unit near transit target,” Hendry said.

The targets for non-market housing are lagging the other two types, although the city says that those are still on track for the original goalposts. The aim of non-market units is 746. “To the end of June 2025, we’re now at 301,” Hendry said.

The housing officer clarified that the numbers are only counted when reaching the building permit stage of development. “Last year, we saw 893 units at the development permit stage for non market housing,” he said. In 2025, he hopes those development permits can tick toward the housing total.

The site of the news conference is soon to be home to some of that non-market housing — a development Hendry said epitomized the accelerator fund’s success. The previously city-owned property was sold to non-profit Liberty Housing, and will become nearly 200 units of non-market housing, funding halfway by the federal government through the Housing Accelerator Fund. The former YMCA site in Haysboro will be home to a daycare, and is located near public transit.

Federal MP Corey Hogan spoke favourably of the partnership between the federal government and the city.

“This is a really constructive and positive relationship that we have with the City of Calgary, and we look forward to continuing to work with the city and building more things,” Hogan said.

“The rest of Canada has lots to learn from Calgary across the board.”

ktulloch@postmedia.com