Calgary city council has voted in favour of repealing citywide rezoning after weeks of public feedback and debate.

Council voted 12 to 3 in favour of repeal with councillors Nathaniel Schmidt, Myke Atkinson and Andrew Yule the sole votes against.

The vote comes after eight public hearing sessions over two weeks where 411 Calgarians addressed city council, and nearly 3,300 written submissions were also received.

“This vote was about restoring the voice in the community, understanding that change will continue to happen,” Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said following the vote. “But on a go forward, Calgarians will have more of their voices heard and respected through that process.”

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

Approved back in 2024 by the previous city council after the longest public hearing in city history, citywide rezoning made residential grade-oriented infill (R-CG) the default residential zoning district across the city.

It allowed a variety of housing types to be built on a single property, including rowhouses and townhouses.

“Blanket rezoning does not reduce the cost of building, it hasn’t sped up development timelines, it does not get homes built faster or cheaper,” said Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean in his debate. “What it has done, however, is divide communities.  It has created uncertainty, it has eroded trust and it’s attempted to fundamentally change the character of communities across our city.”

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Calgary city council wraps up citywide rezoning public hearing

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According to city administration, there have been 639 development permits enabled through citywide rezoning including 386 rowhomes, 41 single detached homes, and 53 semi detached homes.

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City data shows most of those permits, 165, were approved in Ward 7, followed by 86 in Ward 11, 83 in Ward 9 and 78 each in Wards 1, 4 and 6.

Wards 2, 3 and 12 had zero development permits enabled by citywide rezoning, according to city data.

“Too often we spoke of housing like it’s pollution, something that needs to be relegated to places that are less desirable and kept away from places we value now,” Schmidt said during the debate. “That’s not how we build a vision for the future and that’s not how we build communities.”

Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot, who introduced the motion to repeal citywide rezoning, said council’s decision opens the door to a new plan to enable housing in growth in a more targeted way.

“Ultimately, we need to increase our intensity of use to make our city more affordable and more sustainable,” he told reporters. “We can’t just continue to grow out, we have to grow up as well so a made-in-Calgary solution, I think, is going to be the best path forward and that’s going to require a lot of work.”

Calgary’s mayor also ran on a platform to find a replacement for citywide rezoning.

Some city councillors expressed frustration the housing policy was being repealed without a replacement plan.

“I believe in good governance,” Atkinson said. “This wasn’t good governance. You don’t repeal and then figure something out later.”

After nearly two years of concerns around the impacts from citywide rezoning, the group Calgarians for Thoughtful Growth was encouraged that city council “really did listen” to the feedback from residents.

Chris Davis, a representative from the group, told reporters Wednesday that they recognize there needs to be meaningful planning work to get housing built.

“I don’t think any of us are so naive as to think we don’t have to respond positively and effectively to density, it was all about how we did it,” Davis said. “This is an opportunity now for all Calgarians to come together and work collaboratively to find solutions.”

Housing advocates like More Neighbours Calgary said there wasn’t much surprise by council’s vote, but there remains disappointment and concern over the impact the repeal will have on housing.

“We should be trying to build as much as we can… we should be letting the market meet the housing needs of Calgarians,” said the group’s co-founder Kathryn Davies. “We just seem committed to restraining that as we can.”

According to city administration, the changes and repeal won’t take effect until August.

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The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has written to the City of Calgary to provide clarity on how council’s upcoming decision to repeal citywide rezoning could impact federal housing funds.

It comes as the city’s Infrastructure and Planning Committee meeting was presented a report Wednesday that said CMHC “may deem” the City of Calgary to be non-compliant with the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) Contribution Agreement if city council fully repeals citywide rezoning.

Calgary was awarded $251.3 million, including top-ups, from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund, with $122.9 million allocated so far. The next instalment of the fund is set for the end of March 2026.

In the statement sent to city administration and councillors, obtained by Global News, CMHC said Calgary agreed it “would eliminate exclusionary zoning city-wide,” and enable a variety of missing middle housing types.

“In order to remain compliant with the agreement, any updated zoning must not reintroduce exclusionary (single family only) zoning, allow for at least four units on a lot across the city without additional approvals, and must not reintroduce approval processes or other barriers that slow down development,” CMHC said in its note to the city.

CMHC said it looks forward to working with Calgary on “options to achieve this” in the coming weeks.

Calgary city council is set to hold a public hearing March 23 on whether it should repeal citywide rezoning, but the issue has created an ongoing back and forth about whether the city’s federal housing funding would be affected by the decision.

City councillors are interpreting CMHC’s statement differently, with Ward 4 Coun. DJ Kelly saying he believes Calgary’s HAF funding will be terminated if citywide rezoning is fully repealed.

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“Throughout this entire process we’ve been waiting to hear back from the federal government about what their take is on it,” Ward 4 Coun. DJ Kelly said.

“Planning decisions need to be made for planning reasons, but that being said, we as a council need to sit down and figure out what that answer really means for us.”

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Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean, however, said he doesn’t think the funding will be impacted if council moves ahead with repealing the policy.

“Nowhere in that agreement does it say that the funding is tied to exclusionary zoning or four units as a right. It doesn’t say that anywhere in there, in my interpretation of the agreement,” McLean told reporters Wednesday.

In its report to committee, city administration highlighted two initiatives in the agreement that CMHC could interpret as the city no longer satisfying if citywide rezoning is repealed, including “undertake city-initiated redesignations to streamline approvals to increase housing supply,” as well as “undertake land use bylaw amendments to promote missing middle land use districts.”

Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas recently returned from a trip to Ontario where he met with federal officials and CMHC, seeking clarity on the future of the funding.

Farkas said he received reassurances the federal government wants to work with Calgary to build housing, as the city has led the country in housing starts over the last three years.

“Obviously, the federal government would like to see much more density, much more zoning applied across cities from coast to coast to coast,” Farkas said. “But the local context really matters, and also the written words of the agreement really matter.”

During the election, Farkas ran on a platform to repeal and replace citywide rezoning. Although a replacement plan hasn’t been unveiled,  Farkas told reporters it is part of the ongoing discussions.

“The worst case scenario is that council goes back to the way things were without any type of replacement plan or approach in terms of how we’re going to build the housing,” Farkas said. “The worst case scenario will never materialize here.”

As it stands, the motion to repeal citywide rezoning directs city administration to revert the city’s land-use bylaw to what it was prior to the previous city council approving citywide rezoning, but would exclude properties that had development permits approved prior to the motion or any currently under review in the permit process.

City administration said the implications to federal funding won’t be fully known until after council decides on whether to repeal citywide, but the report to councillors outlined $861 million in funds that could be impacted across multiple streams. 

Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot, who drafted the motion to repeal citywide rezoning, said administration is “risk averse” when it comes to a potential “loss in revenue.”

“The way I look at it is, it’s not money we have so it’s not money we’ve lost,” Chabot told reporters. “It’s money we could have and so let’s work with our federal counterparts to see what we can get while still delivering what Calgarians expect from us.”

Committee went behind closed doors for nearly two hours Wednesday to discuss the impacts and the recent communication from CMHC.

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