After more than two weeks, the hearing for Calgary's city-wide rezoning plan finally came to an end at 9:17 pm on Monday, closing the largest public hearing in Calgary's history.
It began on Monday, April 22 and saw a total of 736 speakers and 238 panels voice their their thoughts to council, on top of 6,101 written statements that were submitted, according to an update published by the City on Tuesday.
Time has also been alloted on Wednesday for speakers who previously registered but were unable to have their turn to voice their thoughts.
On Thursday, May 9 at 9:30 am, council will then receive a presentation recapping the public hearing. On Monday, May 13 at 11:30 am, Council will then reconvene to have any questions answered by staff, after which they will conduct their debate and then make their final votes.
Calgary City-Wide Rezoning
The city-wide rezoning plan, also referred to as Rezoning for Housing, comes after the City approved its Home Is Here housing strategy in September (which also took a multi-day public hearing).
Currently, like many other cities facing a housing crisis, a majority of Calgary's residential neighbourhoods are zoned for single-family homes.
The proposed city-wide rezoning would rezone all existing residential lots to a new R-CG (Residential - Grade-Oriented) or R-G (Residential - Low-Density Mixed Housing) zone, opening the door for multiplexes and rowhouses.
Some areas governed by Local Area Plans would be rezoned to H-GO (Housing - Grade Oriented) zones, and the rezoning plan would also allow both a secondary suite and a backyard suite on the same property, remove parking requirements for backyard suites, and add "Contextual Single-Detached Dwelling" as an allowable use in R-CG zones in order to preserve development rights.
The rezoning has been a contentious topic in Calgary for several months now.
In March, a motion was introduced to cancel the public hearing altogether and designate the issue for a plebiscite vote during the 2025 municipal election. Other attempts were also made to delay the public hearings. All were ultimately defeated.
The rezoning plan also received opposition from the Calgary Real Estate Board, who said that "blanket rezoning is not the right solution to address Calgary’s housing challenges" and that it "poses a significant risk to communities, driving up the level of congestion in neighbourhoods and putting added strain on infrastructure and service quality."
Quietly looming over the rezoning plan is also $228M from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF).
In September, prior to Calgary reaching a HAF agreement with the federal government, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure, and Communities Sean Fraser sent a letter to Mayor Jyoti Gondek saying Calgary's application would not be approved unless they ended exclusionary zoning. In March, when the aforementioned plebiscite motion was being debated, Fraser then said on Twitter that the Government of Canada would withhold funding if Calgary, or any other city, fails to meet the conditions of their HAF agreements.
By this time next week, after council has made their votes, we'll likely also know whether Calgary will be getting the funding.
