👎 Calgary City Council votes to repeal citywide rezoning
After an eight day public hearing on housing, city council voted on April 8th to roll back the clock to 1950's era blanket rezoning that will once again permit only single-detached homes on 68% of residential lots in Calgary. The vote passed 12-3 with councillors Myke Atkinson, Nathaniel Schmidt and Andrew Yule in opposition.
Despite a well-funded anti-rezoning campaign that paid for front page newspaper wraps and distributed leaflets across the city, the public hearing proved to be much more nuanced with many thoughtful Calgarians seeking leadership from council on the very real problems with housing facing this city. (Graph source: More Neighbours Calgary)
💬 Promise made, promise broken
Mayor Farkas distinctly campaigned on repealing and replacing rezoning with gentle density, but has failed to provide Calgarians with a proposed path forward for “replacement” or how he intends to “support gentle density while building a variety of homes at a more affordable price point” as he promised in his election platform.
The self-branded "Pathfinder" whose campaign slogan was "Our Path Forward" appears to be lost in the woods and all out of leadership just six months into his term as mayor.
Mayor Farkas’ 2025 election campaign promised “gentle density while building a variety of homes at a more affordable price point”, but he has thus far not provided Calgarians any details on his path forward. (Source: jeromy.ca)
💸 $861.2-million in federal funding now at risk
A report from the City Administration shows how the City is now at risk of losing nearly a billion dollars in federal funding for housing and transit thanks to council's short-sighted decision to repeal rezoning, rather than addressing feedback from Calgarians on how to improve it.
Loss of these federal funds, as has already occurred after a similar repeal in Red Deer, would be a devastating blow to addressing Calgary's housing crisis, which began to see success last year with a record high number of new housing starts.
Source: City of Calgary (IP2026-0072 Attachment 6)
🚧 Calgary is still facing a $49-billion infrastructure crisis
The Bearspaw water feeder failure is just the tip of the iceberg. Today, Calgary faces a more than $49-billion infrastructure bill for aging roads, public transit, wastewater infrastructure and more over the next decade.
Approving costly new sprawl communities like Providence with their own new infrastructure needs and now fully repealing citywide rezoning is financial recklessness on the part of this city council. They have doubled down on the status quo conditions that led to the current crumbling infrastructure crisis.
🙏 Thank you to everyone who emailed and spoke at the public hearing
Thank you to everyone who took the time out of your day to speak up for making Calgary and your corner of the city a better place. While the outcome is disappointing, even secondary suites took years of setbacks before city council finally caught up with Calgarians and approved suites citywide.
We must continue to advocate for gentle density citywide that provides better housing options because we can't afford to pave over the surrounding natural ecosystems and farmland, nor can we afford to continue to stretch our limited public funds even thinner.
