Another 10 municipalities in British Columbia have now been assigned individual housing targets under the provincial government’s Housing Supply Act legislation.
Collectively, these communities are required to deliver 38,930 net new homes over the next five years, through September 2030.
There are also specific prescriptions for units by size (number of bedrooms per unit), units by tenure (secured rental vs. ownership), and rental units by market rate (below-market, market, social, and supportive housing). Of this overall total, more than 14,000 units must be below-market rental housing.
Within Metro Vancouver, five municipalities account for 30,797 of the required units. Burnaby has the largest target at 10,240 homes, followed by Richmond with 6,753, the Township of Langley with 6,596, Coquitlam with 6,481, and Pitt Meadows with 727.
Nearby on the Sea to Sky Corridor, the District of Squamish has been assigned 1,069 units.
Outside the region, the targets include 2,993 homes in Langford, 1,829 in Vernon, 1,334 in Courtenay, and 908 in the City of Penticton.
Each city’s housing target is based on a formula that takes into account the required supply to address the extreme core housing need, the supply to permanently house people experiencing homelessness, the supply to address suppressed household formation, the anticipated supply needed over the next five years, and the rental housing supply needed to return the rental vacancy rate to a healthy range of three per cent.
The legislated targets for each city are based on meeting 75 per cent of their estimated housing needs.
Municipal governments must not only approve new housing projects but also implement policies and directives that help catalyze the completion of these units. However, the ability for municipalities to drive new housing supply is also currently significantly constrained by overwhelming macroeconomic and microeconomic factors, including growing construction costs and weakened demand.
With this fourth round of 10 cities, this brings the number of municipal jurisdictions with legislated target orders to 40 cities, with orders for the first round of cities — which included the City of Vancouver — rolled out in September 2023.
According to the provincial government, over 16,000 net new homes have been built in the first 30 municipal jurisdictions with target orders.
Under the legislation, the provincial government can compel and intervene with municipal governments that are falling behind the annual incremental target orders and make specific directives that legally require cities to amend their bylaws and policies. So far, the Province has done so with the District of West Vancouver and the District of Oak Bay.