Edmonton and Calgary have become standout performers in Canada’s housing story. Both cities have dramatically ramped up housing starts, embraced zoning reform, and earned top marks under the federal Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF). Yet success has come with an uncomfortable side effect: a growing backlash from existing homeowners and a political standoff that now threatens to unravel hundreds of millions in federal funding.
The HAF, administered by CMHC and worth over $4 billion nationally, was designed to push municipalities toward transformational change through streamlined permitting, missing middle housing, and the elimination of single-family-only zoning. Edmonton went further than most, allowing up to eight units as-of-right city-wide through a sweeping zoning bylaw overhaul that came into effect in January 2024. Calgary followed suit with blanket rezoning that made grade-oriented infill the default across most residential parcels. By July 2025, Calgary had exceeded its overall HAF housing supply target (more than 44,000 new units) more than a year ahead of schedule.
But the numbers mask a growing political problem. Calgary’s remaining $129.5 million in HAF funding was placed in jeopardy when council began debating whether to repeal the blanket rezoning policy — a move driven largely by pushback from established neighbourhoods resistant to densification. CMHC has made its position clear: any updated zoning must continue to allow at least four units per lot citywide without additional approvals and must not reintroduce processes that slow development. If the city fails to comply, funding — potentially including transit and infrastructure dollars — is at risk.
Here lies the core tension that the HAF’s design has failed to adequately address. The fund takes a cookie-cutter approach, tying funding to blanket policy conditions rather than allowing cities to tailor their growth strategies to local context. Calgary and Edmonton are not Toronto or Vancouver. They have abundant land, different density patterns, and distinct neighbourhood histories. A city-wide rezoning mandate that works in one context can generate fierce resistance in another. When that resistance becomes a political force, it can destabilize the very progress the fund was intended to secure.
Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas has argued the point bluntly: funding should reflect whether housing actually gets built, not whether a particular zoning mechanism is in place. It’s a reasonable challenge to the fund’s logic. If Calgary is outbuilding nearly every city in Canada, why should federal dollars hinge on the preservation of a specific bylaw rather than on outcomes?
A more effective approach would allow cities to propose differentiated strategies, such as targeted densification along transit corridors, neighbourhood-specific density plans, or missing middle pilots in areas with demonstrated demand, rather than imposing uniform rezoning across an entire city. Parliamentary Budget Office analysis has noted that Calgary and Edmonton’s rezoning initiatives were already well underway before HAF agreements were even signed, raising legitimate questions about whether the fund’s conditions are driving outcomes or simply attaching strings to momentum that already existed.
The HAF has delivered real gains by pushing cities to remove barriers to housing development. But as Alberta’s cities now navigate homeowner opposition, political reversals, and funding threats, the federal government would do well to consider whether its blunt instrument is the right tool, or whether a more adaptive, outcomes-focused framework could deliver more homes with less conflict.
Independent Opinion
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