Multiplex under construction in the 4000 block of 40th Avenue.
By Carol Volkart
Dunbar residents concerned about the multiplexes being built in our neighbourhood might be interested to know they’re not alone.
Metro mayors, residents of other communities, neighbourhood groups and a group of experienced planners, architects and academics are raising concerns not just about the size and shape of the new buildings, but about the new housing legislation that opened the doors to them.
While the province said the November 2023 legislation was essential to get more homes built faster in a housing crisis, critics say it’s a top-down, undemocratic approach that transfers zoning powers to the province and dismisses local planning, expertise and input.
Of top concern are Bill 44, which requires all municipalities of more than 5,000 people to allow at least four units of housing on every lot, and Bill 47, which imposes new density requirements around transit hubs.
“This one-size-fits-all approach hands control to bureaucrats in Victoria who have never walked our streets, don’t understand our neighbourhoods, and takes decision-making away from the people who were elected to represent them, their local councils,” said Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West, one of 16 Metro mayors who signed a November 2025 letter to the province asking it to repeal the bills responsible.
While some municipalities initially tried to defy the legislation, the province forced them to comply. By contrast, Vancouver city council strongly supported the new bills, and in some cases went further than they required.
Vancouver was actually ahead of the province in the densification race. In September of 2023, two months before the new provincial legislation came in, city council unanimously agreed to allow up to six units on single-family lots, and up to eight if they were rental.
Multiplex in the 3100 block of 33rd Avenue.
Calgary citizens kick out their council
Opposition to multiplexes isn’t restricted to B.C.
The most dramatic response so far to changing single-family areas to multiplex ones has been in Calgary, where city council decided in 2024 that blanket rezoning was needed in order to attract federal housing funding.
Its plan to allow rowhouses, semi-detached homes and fourplexes in large areas of the city where only single-family homes had been allowed led to the longest public hearing in the city’s history.
In the spring of 2024, more than 700 people, about 70 percent of them opposed, addressed council over 12 days of contentious hearings. About 6,000 pieces of correspondence were submitted. But when it came to the vote, council approved it 9-6 anyway.
Residents got their own back in the October civic election of 2025. They elected a majority of councillors opposed to blanket rezoning and threw out one-term mayor Jyoti Gondek. The new council has now begun the process of reversing the rezoning.
Referring to the previous council’s contention that blanket rezoning was necessary for federal funding, new Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said in a year-end Calgary Herald interview, “I don’t work for some bureaucrat in Ottawa.
“I don’t work for these developers. I work for Calgarians. Our council voted decisively to reject the one-size-fits-all approach in favour of a more community-informed strategy that will actually build the needed housing at a price Calgarians can afford.”
New building at 4716 Paton Street.
Burnaby citizens win restrictions on multiplex sizes
Closer to home, Burnaby residents horrified at the size and shape of the new multiplexes and laneway homes going up on their streets convinced their council to rein them in.
“Feedback from residents highlighted the need for refinements to ensure developments remain compatible with surrounding homes,” said a statement from council in October 2025 after it cut multiplex heights to three storeys from four, and limited rear principal buildings to two storeys. Allowable floor area and maximum lot coverage were also cut, and parking minimums were increased.
Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley told the CBC he’d been hearing complaints for months, including from people who don’t usually complain, and “some people felt that this had gone too far.”
Among the critics were former BC MLA Kathy Corrigan, a Burnaby resident who charged that the province and the city had “completely abdicated their responsibility to the neighbourhoods,” and pointed to cities like West Vancouver that pushed back on the provincial multiplex legislation.
Burnaby just “handed the keys to the city over to developers and said, ‘You go to it, you build anything you want.’…The results are these ugly monstrosities,” she told the CBC.
Another view of building at 4716 Paton Street.
Neighbourhood groups urge repeal of legislation
Meanwhile, a newly formed group of neighbourhood associations from across B.C. has urged the province to repeal its housing legislation, saying it’s undermining democracy, causing “irreversible damage” and has failed in its goal of improving affordability.
The British Columbia Alliance of Neighbourhoods, which says it brings together dozens of neighbourhood groups from across the province, sent a letter to Premier David Eby and Housing Minister Christine Boyle in December 2025 calling for a reset of the province’s housing strategy.
The current legislation has led to loss of local control over essential local concerns, eroded municipal accountability, and was passed with no public consultation or input from municipal governments, the group said. “Public consultation is not negotiable in a democratic society.”
The group describes itself as the first platform of its kind that “connects, coordinates and amplifies voices of neighbourhood groups and associations across British Columbia, and pursues solutions related to sustainability, livability and affordability in collaboration with all levels of government.”
Multiplex at 33rd Avenue and Vine Street.
16 Metro mayors ask province for changes
Different municipalities have responded differently to the province’s housing legislation, but in November of 2025, enough Metro Vancouver mayors were upset enough to join forces and urge the government to repeal Bills 44 and 47.
In a Nov. 28 letter to Eby, they complained the bills were introduced with “limited coordination and consultation” with local governments and aren’t aligned with local land use, regional planning and infrastructure.
“Provincewide mandates do not reflect the local planning frameworks, geographic characteristics or market realities,” said the letter, signed by 16 mayors and sent by Burnaby’s Mayor Hurley, who is also Metro Vancouver board chair. Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim was not one of the signatories.
The letter said municipalities don’t have the money to pay for the infrastructure required for the new densities, and criticized provincial housing targets that hold municipalities accountable for factors outside of their control.
Housing Minister Christine Boyle responded that the policy won’t change, saying that it is working to bring down rents and increase vacancy rates.
New construction at 15th Avenue and Courtenay Street.
27 experts urge province to reconsider housing bills
Earlier in the year, a group of 27 urbanists, urban planners, architects and UBC/SFU academics signed a letter to Eby and Boyle that among other things, asked for reconsideration of Bills 44 and 47.
Those bills are not providing affordable housing, the August 2025 letter said. “They are inflating land values, massive speculation, demovictions and displacement, while creating the wrong kind of supply that is mostly small expensive units in oversized market towers.”
Land use and planning authority should be restored to municipalities and regions, and there should be more flexibility in implementing Official Development Plans and the Transit Oriented Areas required by Bill 47, they wrote.
“Cities are built on grids, not arbitrary circles around transit which should only be a guide in principle, not for literal implementation. Avoid one-size-fits-all approaches.”
While they didn’t outright mention multiplexes, they suggested other ways of adding housing to communities. For example, incentives to encourage individual end-users to build more secondary suites and infill development that can create more rentals and mortgage-helpers.
They urged “gentle, ground-oriented density options that better match household needs and local context.” Towers should not be the default solution, they said. While they have their place, they’re not always the best form. “The right supply is livable, secure, and suited to local neighbourhoods and larger units for families, without triggering demovictions.”
Multiplex at 35th and Maple.
What’s Next?
Signs are strong that multiplexes will be a “hot issue” in October’s Vancouver civic election, The Vancouver Sun’s Douglas Todd said in a Jan. 8 column.
But what are voters’ choices? Todd noted that all four civic parties with members now on council – ABC, the Greens, OneCity and COPE – were unanimously in favour of multiplexes when they were introduced in Vancouver in September of 2023.
Indeed, OneCity’s Lucy Maloney, who replaced OneCity’s Christine Boyle in the spring 2025 civic byelection, proposed a motion in July that Vancouver should copy Burnaby’s more permissive rules and allow bigger multiplexes. That would make them more viable and “open up additional locations to multifamily housing,” her motion said.
Burnaby subsequently rolled back its allowable sizes, and there’s no indication Vancouver city council plans to act on Maloney’s motion.
Todd wrote that the only civic party that opposes multiplexes, TEAM for a Livable Vancouver, doesn’t currently have a seat on council. (Full disclosure: I am a member of TEAM.)
Todd noted that former councillor Colleen Hardwick, who’ll be seeking TEAM’s mayoral nomination in this fall’s election “has said her party would change Vancouver’s zoning from up to six strata units per property, down to a maximum of four.”
A Dec. 16 , 2025 TEAM news release on multiplexes said: “TEAM supports more housing of all types in neighbourhoods, but believes it should be in scale and carried out in collaboration with residents rather than imposed by politicians and bureaucrats who think they know best.”