Public hearing on rezoning enters first session, expected to take days to complete

Calgary's public hearing on blanket rezoning kicked off Monday, marking the start of what is slated to be the largest-ever public hearing to hit city council.

According to the city as of Monday morning, 741 people have signed up to speak at the hearing. Council will hear from people in panels of five, and each person is allowed to speak for five minutes. 

The blanket rezoning proposal is just one of the many actions in the city's housing strategy that was approved by council last year, and city administration believes it's a key part of increasing supply and addressing the housing crisis.

The strategy, if it's approved, would allow for different housing types, such as townhomes and rowhouses, to be built in neighbourhoods that currently only allow single-family homes.

As the hearing began, the city cited the 2023 Housing Needs Assessment, which identified that one in five Calgarians struggle to afford their housing costs. The report also states that the median cost to purchase a detached home went up by 37 per cent over the last three years. 

Proponents say citywide rezoning will not change communities overnight, and that it's a step in the right direction to create more housing opportunities.

One Calgary resident and the first speaker of the day, Colin McCann, said he believes this proposal will remove red tape for property owners.

"I'm sure that many of us here have noticed a distinct partisan shift in tone in this debate around upzoning since the federal and the provincial governments got involved," McCann told council.

"I'd like to spend these five minutes trying to diffuse some of that, and offer up why I support upzoning despite being a staunch conservative and a homeowner in an area that is supposedly under threat of increased development by this proposal."

McCann believes Calgary is Canada's "most entrepreneurial" city, and like many other Canadians, he was attracted to the area because of its relative affordability compared to other markets. 

Now, McCann said he feels as though he has a responsibility to address the issue of housing availability and affordability because of his decision to move.

"This upzoning proposal gets government out of the way and lets us gently build our way out of this hole," he said. "Other Canadian cities, like the one I fled, want to take the statist approach and have big government swoop in and make the problem worse."

The city's What We Heard report, released following public engagement on the rezoning proposal, notes that the city received comments from 1,050 participants at nine project information sessions, 465 participants from various webinars, and 4,959 comments from 3,930 participants through the city's online engagement portal.

The majority of the comments received were from opponents to the proposal. Approximately 70 per cent of respondents expressed concern about rezoning, while the remaining 30 per cent were in favour.