The housing target: 81 per cent, and one home torn down for every three built

In September 2023 the Province gave ten municipalities five-year housing targets, with a number to reach by the end of each year. The District of North Vancouver’s order set 499 net new homes by the end of year one and 1,021 by the end of year two. Net new means completions minus demolitions.

The District’s second-year report, filed in November 2025, records 832 net new homes over the two years to September 30, 2025: 81 per cent of the target. The District counts 3,940 homes built or in the pipeline, and the Mayor said he hoped for “some grace” on which quarter they land in.

The same group, the same two years

• Victoria: 2,359 of 1,425, 166 per cent
• Port Moody: 645 of 499, 129 per cent
• Delta: 1,146 of 1,098, 104 per cent
• Vancouver: 8,988 of 10,597, 85 per cent
• District of North Vancouver: 832 of 1,021, 81 per cent
• Saanich: 810 of 1,041, 78 per cent
• Abbotsford: 1,468 of 2,186, 67 per cent
• Kamloops: 882 of 1,414, 62 per cent
• West Vancouver: 172 of 462, 37 per cent
• Oak Bay: 36 of 138, 26 per cent

Three municipalities beat their target outright. The District sits fifth of ten, ahead of the two that the Province has already put under a directive, West Vancouver and Oak Bay, and behind Delta, a suburb of similar size with a similar housing stock.

The demolition problem

The second-year reports also show what is being lost. In its second year the District completed 493 homes and demolished 157: one home removed for every three finished, and 32 per cent of the year’s completions cancelled out. Vancouver’s demolitions were 14 per cent of its completions, Abbotsford’s 17 per cent, Delta’s 8 per cent, Port Moody’s 3 per cent, Victoria’s 3 per cent. Only Oak Bay, which built 43 homes, had a worse ratio.

This is the tear-down pattern: an older house comes down and a larger single house goes up on the same lot, adding nothing to the count and often removing a rental suite. It is a policy choice as much as a market outcome, because the District decides what can be built on that lot instead.

What I would do

Report the demolition count beside the completion count in every housing update to council. Make it easier to replace one house with three or four homes than with one bigger house, on the lots the District has already zoned for that. And publish the approval time for every application, so a builder who waits two years can say so in public rather than to a councillor in private.

Accuracy note: all counts are the municipalities’ own figures as filed with the Province for October 1, 2023 to September 30, 2025; the yearly targets are from each Ministerial Order. Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number. Burnaby, Coquitlam, Richmond, Surrey and the City of North Vancouver received their orders later, in a second group, so their two-year figures are not comparable yet.