B.C. orders West Vancouver to allow density in Ambleside area
After West Vancouver didn’t meet its provincially legislated housing targets, the B.C. government was prompted to act and “ordered” the District to allow more housing to be built.
In a press release published on April 7, B.C. said the District had “delivered only 58 of its 220 net-new units” of its year-one target, as well as missed its Dec. 31, 2025, deadline to implement three provincial housing directives to allow for greater housing density.
Mark Sager, the Mayor of West Vancouver, disagreed with this framing.
“I think their press release is kind of a bit of a spin on what really happened,” he said in an interview with Daily Hive. “Because, really, the Minister recognized the work that West Van has done to address the housing needs in West Van.”
Through the Housing Supply Act, the Province is overriding City Council to implement the Ambleside Centre Local Area Plan, which rezones to allow for three-to-four storey buildings to front Marine Drive and Bellevue Avenue, five-to-six storey buildings on 16th Street, and 14-16 storey buildings on 17th Street.
Sager said this order is only for the business component of the Ambleside plan, as council had already passed it for the apartment area.
West Vancouver’s council had gotten stuck on a three-three vote, he explained. As a property owner in the area, he couldn’t vote.
“And so essentially, the Ministry just cast a deciding vote between a split Council,” he said.
While Sager admitted that “it’s an unusual step for the provincial government to make an order like this,” he said it is in a “very limited area” of the community.
What led to this?
B.C. said that West Vancouver “failed to make satisfactory progress” to its year one housing target, and so the Province appointed an advisor to help the District in early 2025.
The advisor conducted a two-month review of the municipality and identified recommendations. The Province then issued the three directives for West Vancouver, giving the District until Dec. 31, 2025, to meet them.
Alongside the Ambleside plan, the directives were to increase density at Park Royal and the Ambleside apartment area. The District is now required to share “progress reports” every three months with the Province.
West Vancouver was among the first batch of municipalities to which the Province legislated housing target orders in 2023. These targets are for completion and move-in ready homes, not municipal approvals.
West Vancouver’s target was 1,432, with 854 of them studio or one-bedrooms, 256 two-bedrooms, and 321 three-bedrooms, to be completed by September 2028.
When asked why West Vancouver missed its year one targets, Sager said that nobody is building homes right now, and there are a lot of units for sale.
“As a local council, we control the zoning, but we don’t control people actually taking permits,” he said. “We’ve zoned land to make housing possible, but there’s nobody building.”