Calgary's Housing Showdown: What the Rezoning Repeal Means for Your Neighborhood

[CALGARY, AB] — The numbers don't lie, and right now they're screaming. As of today, a rough tally from approximately 4,588 public submissions and speakers at the ongoing blanket rezoning repeal hearing shows 3,623 Calgarians — a thundering 79% — want the policy gone. Ward 14 Councillor Landon Johnston posted the updated count this afternoon, and the math is brutal for anyone who thought this fight was close.

How We Got Here: Former Mayor Gondek's Gamble Comes Due

Cast your mind back to August 2024. Former Mayor Gondek and the previous Council pushed through citywide residential rezoning — a policy that quietly rewrote the rules on roughly 306,774 residential parcels, or about 68% of Calgary's homes. Single-family lots became fair game for duplexes, fourplexes, and row housing overnight, no individual redesignation required. The intent was serious: attack the housing shortage head-on by unlocking density and pushing supply. It wasn't a crazy idea. The execution, and the politics around it, were another matter entirely.

By December 2025, the new Council under Mayor Jeromy Farkas had seen enough. They voted 13-2 to initiate the repeal process — a number that tells you almost everything about the political temperature in this city.

350 Voices Became 4,588 — And the Gap Didn't Close

The public hearing kicked off March 23rd with over 350 speakers already signed up and 2,390 written submissions in the pile. A week later, that pile has nearly doubled. What it hasn't done is shifted meaningfully toward the policy's defenders. The 21% opposed to repeal are real, they're vocal, and their argument has genuine weight — the policy did produce results. Since August 2024, blanket rezoning has enabled 4,500 units total. In 2025 alone, it accounted for 1,655 units, representing 63% of all units approved through low-density development permits. That is not nothing.

But 79% of people who showed up — and showing up to a civic hearing is an act of genuine effort — want it reversed. In a city where most residents treat council chambers like a haunted house, that kind of turnout carries weight.

What a Repeal Actually Means for Your Street

Here's where it lands on the ground. If Council votes to kill the policy, the city's base density drops from 75 units per hectare back to 60. Those 306,774 parcels revert to their original zoning designations. The fourplex your neighbour was quietly eyeing for the lot next door? Back to requiring a full redesignation application — a process that costs time, money, and political goodwill most developers don't want to spend on a single infill.

Proponents of the original policy will tell you, correctly, that this tightens the supply pipeline at exactly the wrong moment. Calgary's rental market isn't cooling. Construction costs aren't dropping. Repealing a tool that generated 4,500 units in under two years and replacing it with what, exactly, is a question Council owes the public a real answer to — not just a vote.

Opponents will tell you, also correctly, that infrastructure wasn't built for the density the policy invited. Water lines, roads, school capacity — the city's bones weren't redesigned when the zoning map was. Neighbourhoods absorbing more units without upgraded services aren't winning; they're just more crowded.

Both things are true. Council has to pick one anyway.

The full vote is still pending, but with a 13-2 initiation and 79% public input favouring repeal, the direction of travel isn't exactly a mystery. The real question is what Mayor Farkas and this Council offer in its place — because "we repealed it" is a political win that expires the moment the next housing crisis headline lands.

Johnston's numbers are a snapshot. The city's housing math doesn't change when the hearing closes.