Two replies to administrative inquiries show that development appeals since citywide rezoning was approved are costing both time and money, adding costs for Calgary homeowners

Administration responses to inquiries from Couns. Sonya Sharp and Kourtney Penner showed a significant jump in the number of appeals to the Subdivision Development and Appeal Board (SDAB) in the months following the approval of citywide rezoning in Calgary.

The results of those inquiries will come to the July 29 Regular Meeting of Calgary city council.

The SDAB hears appeals of decisions made by the City’s subdivision authority and the development authority.

According to the response to Coun. Sharp’s inquiry, 172 of 269 development permits received by the City of Calgary that would have otherwise needed a land use amendment under prior rules were approved. None have been refused, though some have been cancelled.

Further, of the 172, there have been 33 appeals up to the end of May 2025, the response read.

“A more comprehensive SDAB statistics and trends analysis is forthcoming from Administration that is scheduled to be published in early Q3 of this year,” read the document from Teresa Goldstein, Director of Community Planning.

Coun. Penner had asked similar questions around the number of appeals, with the response being 85 up to June 2025. That, however, includes 55 appeals (R-CG) for discretionary uses, with another five on permitted uses under the H-GO land use.

Her inquiry followed up asking if the timeline for appeal resolution had increased.

“The average time between the notice of appeal and merit hearing in 2025 is 68 days,” read the admin response.

“The SDAB is meeting its obligations to hear appeals and issue written decisions within the timelines set out in the MGA (Municipal Government Act) (30 days to start the hearing and 15 days to issue a written decision).”

$500 a day, plus appeal costs, say CICBA executive director

Shameeer Gaidhar, executive director of the Calgary Inner City Builders Association (CICBA), said that delays caused by appeals have a direct impact on the cost of homes for consumers. He said that every day of delay costs $500, on the low end. For each month a potential project is delayed, that’s adding more than $15,000 in cost.

It means a 68-day process is in excess of $35,000 in carrying costs. For a four-unit rowhouse, that’s $8,000 in added cost per unit.

On top of that is the cost of the appeal itself, often around $20,000, said Gaidhar.

“These appeals, warranted or unwarranted, do basically add cost, which gets directly pushed to the end user, so it totally erodes affordability,” he told LWC.

Coun. Penner said while appeals are appropriate in some cases, right now, it’s impeding the ability to get more homes into the hands of Calgarians.

“I just think that when we’re looking holistically at the cost of housing, and when people are complaining about how rowhouses aren’t affordable, members of the public need to realize the places where they’re contributing to the increased cost of housing as well, and so it’s a bit of a give and take that needs to happen,” she said.

She estimated that without R-CG, a recent day-and-a-half public hearing meeting of council could have lasted three days.

“That’s not a great use of taxpayer money.”

Coun. Sharp said that with the removal of the land-use public hearing as a result of citywide rezoning, which was free for citizens and resulted in a decision that day, it has just pushed any citizen input down to a different and more costly part of the process.

“They took away a piece of the process, and they’ve made a problem at the end,” she said.

“Now it’s just not working for the people that want to appeal. It’s not working for the builders and the developers in the inner city for the redevelopment.”

Sharp said she’s heard from inner-city builders that before citywide rezoning, they would appear before the SDAB once every few years. Now it’s regularly, she said.

“There’s uncertainty now about when they can get their permits. There’s uncertainty to get their trades. There’s uncertainty to do their POs (purchase orders) and build houses,” Coun. Sharp said.

“I think we’ve just thought we had a problem, where people were the problem and removed it and moved it somewhere else, but now it’s even a bigger problem, and it costs money and time.”

Development appeals have unknown costs to the City of Calgary

While Gaidhar was able to quantify the impact on builders, which is subsequently then passed on to prospective homeowners, the City said it was difficult to tally internal costs for the added appeals.

They said the cost of the appeal varies by project complexity. Those costs include SDAB member remuneration, advertising and the salary and wages of city staff involved in the projects. One limited-term senior planner was added to help with the added workload on SDAB.

Earlier this year, Timothy Bardsley, chair of the SDAB, reported during civic partner updates that workload had risen significantly.

He said they added four more hearing days and hoped that would cut into the backlog.

“In our world, timely means trying to get a date subject to parties agreeing within six to seven weeks of when we first see something. We’re right on the edge of that now,” he said back in May.

Bardsley noted that there are some aspects of the R-CG appeals that often come up, including courtyard impediments and density calculations with respect to secondary suites versus dwelling units.

Gaidhar said overall that R-CG rezoning was a necessary step to take, but it’s only one step out of the 98 recommendations in the Calgary housing strategy and that the others need to be implemented to balance the entire housing spectrum.

Further, he said some nuances need to be ironed out. He referenced recent council decisions to vote down clarifications and changes to some of the R-CG guidelines as continuing to create potential appeals that require development delays.

“The land-use change was the first step that was needed, and it was a step in the right direction for affordability, which was really, really important,” he said.

“The problem is, is that step had hiccups along the way and there needs to be changes.”