City of Edmonton surpasses 2023 housing starts with months to spare

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The City of Edmonton expects to shatter last year’s record for housing starts in the city.

“With fall just underway, we have already outpaced 2023, and we are on pace to issue more building permits and see more housing starts than ever before,” said deputy city manager of urban planning and economy Kim Petrin.

At a press conference on Thursday, officials from the city announced that not only were they on pace to break 2023’s housing start record, but they were also eyeing an all-time housing record that the city set in 2015. Petrin said the news is particularly welcome amid the recent population explosion in the city and province. By adding as much housing as they can, the city hopes that the housing supply will help to ensure the city’s affordable advantage.

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“Edmonton is rapidly growing towards the City Plan target of two million people, and the urban planning and economy department is dedicated to the task of meeting this growth while maintaining affordability,” said Petrin.

What’s a housing start?

The term ‘housing start’ may seem intuitive but it actually stipulates a specific minimum that the building process has to hit prior to being considered a housing start. In Alberta, a housing unit is considered “started” when the basement’s foundation construction commences.

In eight months, from January to August, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the City of Edmonton had 8,888 housing starts compared to 2023’s 5,990 housing starts over the same period of time. Edmonton’s record for housing starts was 13,311 in 2015, but recent data from the CMHC shows that the city is on track to break that, sitting at 11,924 starts with a little over three months to go in the year.

“On Tuesday, the editorial board of the Globe and Mail closed out a piece on municipal housing development with two words, ’emulate Edmonton,’ ” said Petrin.

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Petrin said a key metric that the Globe piece homed in on was the city’s housing starts per capita. While Edmonton has just 2.5 per cent of Canada’s population, it accounts for six per cent of the total national housing starts, making it a leader for housing development in the country.

How the city sped up the housing process

Increasing the city’s supply of housing didn’t happen overnight. The speakers on Thursday highlighted several key areas that contributed to the recent milestone and made it clear that the success was reaped from decisions made years ago, including eliminating parking minimums and modernizing the zoning bylaw.

Lyla Peter, the city’s director of development approvals and inspections in urban planning and economy, also highlighted the effect of red tape reduction within the permitting process.

“Our red-tape reduction efforts since 2018 have saved customers $9.9 million and about 328,000 days annually,” said Peter.

Part of the red-tape reduction was automating residential development permits in developing areas. The city said this process has allowed a developer to apply for a development permit and have shovels in the ground within the same day.

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Whether it’s older actions like the bylaw review and parking minimums, or the more recent ones like the automated permitting system, it has all contributed to an significant increase in the speed of Edmonton’s housing efforts, which is also good news for funding.

Christel Kjenner, director of the city’s housing action team, said the progress the city’s made on the housing front puts it on-track to receive the full extent of the Housing Accelerator Fund, which will be awarded to the city for permitting 35,000 homes by 2026.

“With more than 11,000 approved building permits since we signed our funding agreement in late 2023, what this means is that we are on track, not only to receive the full funding allocation from the federal government, but also creating the supply that we need to make sure all Edmontonians now and into the future can find the type of housing they need in the neighbourhoods that they love,” said Kjenner.

Progress in a variety of housing types

The progress in the housing starts isn’t just in single family homes. Apartments, row houses, mixed-use houses, secondary suites and backyard houses account for 68 per cent of the city’s total permitted residential units, according to the city’s news release.

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While an increased supply of housing can help to keep homes affordable for those buying one, Alberta’s lack of regulation on rent increases are still a challenge for those looking for apartments to rent. Relying on the benefits of a strong supply to temper rising costs, the city is also in a strong position for rental housing starts to retain relative rental affordability.

“Edmonton is leading the country in its purpose-built rental starts per capita,” said Kjenner.

The city has also already reached an affordable housing goal that it set for itself in the Affordable Housing Strategy, which aimed to add an additional 2,700 units of affordable housing between 2023 and 2026. The city expects to crush that target by the end of the year with 2,879 and two years to spare.

zdelaney@postmedia.com

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