Edmonton approves more than half of permits needed to meet 2026 housing target, city says

The City of Edmonton approved enough residential permits last year to construct more than half of the homes it wants to build before the end of 2026, including nearly all the permits needed to reach its missing middle housing target, according to the municipal government.

The intense push to grow the housing supply comes as the city works toward accomplishing three-year targets it set as part of a funding arrangement with the federal government.

Christel Kjenner, director of the city's housing action team, credited the boom to several initiatives, particularly the zoning bylaw that came into effect on Jan. 1, 2024.

The bylaw, which explains what can be built where, allows up to eight residential units on most lots and allows for different forms of backyard housing — previously called garage or garden suites.

"Edmonton is the bright spot in Canada, right now, when it comes to showing how, through policy reform, collaboration with industry and through removing red tape, we really can enable an environment that allows our home-building industry to rise to the challenge of growth and maintain our affordability advantage overall," Kjenner said in an interview.

She noted, however, there is still more work to be done.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the national housing agency, released a report in September 2023 that stated the country needed to increase homebuilding capacity to bring affordability to 2004 levels by the end of the decade.

At the time, it estimated Canada was on pace to have an inadequate supply gap of more than 3.5 million homes in 2030.

The report estimated Alberta, at the time, would have to build an extra 20,000 homes, on top of what the province was already projected to construct.

In February 2024, the federal government announced the City of Edmonton would receive more than $175 million through the CMHC's housing accelerator fund, which spends money on local initiatives that aim to build more homes quickly, as well as support affordable and climate-resilient homes.

Through that agreement, the city aims to build more than 35,400 homes by November 2026, including more than 7,700 missing middle units — multi-unit dwellings like duplexes, rowhouses and low-rise apartments no more than four storeys.

Within the first year, the city approved almost 18,200 total residential permits, just over half of its three-year goal, the city said in a news release earlier this week. That includes almost 7,500 permits to build missing middle housing — about 97 per cent of the target.

The middle forms of housing allow cities to become more dense and offer more flexible options for potential homebuyers, said Sandeep Agrawal, a professor at the University of Alberta's School of Urban and Regional Planning.

"Hopefully, in the coming years, more and more such housing will come, which will be accommodative of a variety of needs," Agrawal said.