Vancouver approved more than 12,500 new homes last year, but fell short of social housing target

A crane is seen above a wood-frame condo project under construction as condo and office towers line the downtown skyline in Vancouver on Friday, July 4, 2025. (Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press)

The City of Vancouver approved more than 12,500 new housing units in 2025, significantly higher than its annual target of 8,300 and well ahead of the pace needed to meet provincial requirements for new construction.

The breakdown of those units, however, reveals some areas where the city has far exceeded its targets and others—most notably social housing—where it is behind on its goals.

Approved in June 2024, the city’s "Housing Vancouver" plan calls for the construction of 83,000 new homes over a 10-year period.

Separately, provincial legislation requires the city to build 28,900 net new units by September 2028.

The city’s plan calls for 60 per cent of the total—some 49,500 units—to be rental homes, with the remaining 33,500 intended to be “ownership housing” in multi-unit buildings, rather than single-family homes.

A total of 15,500 units—19 per cent of the overall total—are intended to be below-market housing, a category that includes 1,500 units of supportive housing, 8,500 units of non-profit social and co-op housing, and 5,500 units of “purpose-built below-market rental housing.”

Last year, the city approved zero units of supportive housing, consistent with Mayor Ken Sim’s motion to pause net new construction of this type of facility in the city.

• Read more: Vancouver votes down councillor’s motion to reverse pause on net new supportive housing

The city’s accounting of new below-market units approved in 2025 combines the social, supportive and co-op groups into a single category, and records 719 units approved. That’s below the target of 1,000 for the year.

The city did exceed its goal for approving new privately owned below-market rental units, however, recording 1,436 such approvals, more than double the annual target of 550.

Rental housing, overall, was a strength. The vast majority of the 12,795 new homes the city approved in 2025 were rentals, with 8,122 units of purpose-built rental housing joining the below-market total to account for 10,277 approvals overall. That’s 269 per cent of the annual target.

Conversely, the city dramatically underperformed its target for new condos, approving 901 units, which is just 34 per cent of the annual goal of 2,650.

A memo to Sim and city councillors from Josh White, Vancouver’s general manager of planning, urban design and sustainability, notes the ongoing “downturn in the condo market” as a partial explanation for the low number of condo approvals.

• Read more: Metro Vancouver condo developer sounds alarm on industry in crisis

Notably, approvals are not the same as completions. The 12,795 units approved in 2025 include both rezonings approved by city council, in cases where rezoning was required, and building permits approved by city staff in cases where proposals conformed with existing zoning, according to White’s memo.

More than 2,300 purpose-built market rental units were completed last year, according to the city’s data. There were also 736 units of new social housing completed. Those two figures combined to account for the city’s best year of new rental housing completions in more than 40 years, a fact the city touted in a news release Wednesday.

“We’re proud to be delivering more housing, faster for Vancouverites,” said Sim, in the release.

“It’s important that those who work in Vancouver can afford to live in Vancouver, including the teachers, health-care workers, families and small businesses who are essential to our city’s liveability and economic growth.”

White’s memo notes this impressive achievement, but also acknowledges concerns about the sustainability of housing construction in the current economic climate.

“Despite recent strong housing completions and significant supply of new housing in the early stages of development, the current economic uncertainty and softer real estate market have raised concerns about whether it is possible to sustain new housing construction in the coming years,” the memo reads.

“The city has implemented measures to support development viability in order to help projects advance to construction, but making meaningful progress toward higher completions and deeper affordability will require co-ordinated efforts across all levels of government and multiple sectors of the economy.”