A coalition of local organizations and housing advocates has issued a call to Calgary city council to find a replacement plan to deliver housing after the repeal of citywide rezoning.

The call came at a press conference outside city hall Monday with dozens of supporters of citywide rezoning across several organizations, including More Neighbours Calgary, Good Neighbour, Calgary Transit Riders, the University of Calgary Students’ Union and the Calgary Alliance for the Common Good.

“There are people working full time who cannot find a home,” More Neighbours co-founder Willem Klumpenhouwer said. “Repeal without replacement doesn’t pause that crisis, it makes it worse.”

Last week, council voted 12-3 in favour of repealing citywide rezoning after eight days of public hearings that saw more than 400 people address councillors on the issue.

The move will see 306,774 residential properties across the city redesignated back to their original low-density residential districts.

The policy, which took effect in August 2024 after being approved by the previous city council, changed the city’s base residential zoning to allow for more housing types on a single property, like duplexes, rowhomes and townhouses, without requiring a public hearing.

Citywide rezoning was one of 98 recommendations included in Home is Here, the city’s strategy to boost housing supply and affordability, amid concerns about impacts on community character, a lack of public input into redevelopment and increased density.

The coalition, however, said repeal will result in more expensive housing.

“Without a solid plan to replace, development will regress and stagnate. Gains on supply and affordability will be lost,” Rev. Kersi Bird with the Calgary Alliance for Common Good said. “The issues at hand are not just about what communities look like, or how much parking is available, it’s about everybody having a place; about security, and dignity, and seeing a future in this city.”

The groups are accusing Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas of not keeping a campaign commitment to repeal and replace citywide rezoning with a new plan to entice densification and build more housing.

Klumpenhouwer said Farkas has broken his commitment to “gentle density” across the city during last fall’s election.

“Six months of silence is not a strategy, it’s not leadership,” he told reporters. “We need a timeline, we need a compromise, and we need it now.”

In response to the coalition’s calls, Farkas said council is committed to “decisive action” to address housing issues, but not just with zoning policy.

He pointed to council’s financial support of the chief housing office, as well as partnerships with non-profit housing providers, and efforts to make land available for subsidized housing.

“I have zero interest with replacing blanket rezoning with a new blanket rezoning,” Farkas told reporters. “I want to work legitimately with the community to be able to get this right, take the input that Calgarians are providing us, build the public will, and then deliver the housing Calgarians need.”

The repeal of citywide rezoning will take effect in August, but local developers told Global News the effects are already being felt in the industry.

Shameer Gaidhar with the Calgary Inner City Builders Association (CICBA) said developers will be limited to single-detached or semi-detached redevelopment in established neighbourhoods without requiring a zoning.

“When our members go out and build houses, they build two types of houses: a paper house and a brick-and-mortar house. The paper house can take up to seven months to develop, and the brick-and-mortar house can take another seven months,” Gaidhar said. “The chances of you getting a development permit by August is really slim so a lot of people said, ‘Nope, we’re waiting until a replacement plan comes down.’”

According to Ward 4 Coun. DJ Kelly, who voted in favour of repealing citywide rezoning, a replacement plan could take up to 18 months to complete following an overhaul to the city’s development plan as well as the zoning bylaw.

Kelly said he plans to bring forward a motion to boost the use of local area plans to help guide redevelopment in established communities as part of a replacement strategy.

“We have to get to work on increasing the amount of local area planning that we’re doing as a city in order to be able to codify exactly where that density belongs in our neighbourhoods,” he told reporters.

City councils have approved eight local area plans so far, with another three currently under development; the city’s goal is to complete 42 plans across the city.

According to Kelly, there are 25,000 fewer people living in Ward 4 since its historical population peak, and housing advocates are “not wrong” in their calls for a replacement to citywide rezoning.

“We need to bring more people back into the community in order to keep our schools open, in order to provide reliable transit. Those are things you need a population density to be able to do,” Kelly told reporters. “They’re definitely right in terms of this can’t be the end.”

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.