‘Solid foundations for a bold future’: How Calgary Housing embraced new development role

Calgary Housing is building more lately. Not only by building more homes, so also in organizational capacity.

“The smallest build we’re doing is in Mount Pleasant: 16 (homes). The largest is in Bridgeland – that’s 203 units in one go,” interim CEO and President Bo Jiang said.

For the past four decades, Calgary Housing operated affordable housing owned by The City of Calgary or the Province of Alberta. That changed in 2024 when Calgary Housing’s mandate was expanded to include developing affordable housing for The City, as its sole shareholder, and for the organization to own and operate directly.

And Calgary Housing’s Board of Directors set an ambitious goal: deliver 3,000 homes in the next decade.

To meet that goal, Calgary Housing needed to bring development roles and capacities in house to have better oversight on all steps of the building process, to build homes that fit Calgary Housing’s operational needs, and to have better control over costs.

And after getting 880 of the 3,000 homes in the development pipeline in just under two years, the Board increased the goal to 4,500 in the same decade.

Part of expanding the capacities included a restructuring of divisions within Calgary Housing. The portfolio management team now also oversees real estate, which allows Calgary Housing to review more opportunities to build or redevelop, to purchase or acquire, and to find other organizations to partner with. 

Reflecting the addition of those in-house capabilities, the asset management division’s mandate expanded to include development. The division now oversees the construction of new homes and ensures proper care and maintenance of City-owned and Calgary Housing-owned properties throughout their entire life cycle. The creation of the new Asset Management and Development department meant the new builds better fit the already-established in-house maintenance practices.

“We’re not looking to build and flip. We’re keeping that quality there and we want to serve residents for 40, 50 or 60 years.”

“We have our own ways of operating. We have our expertise in terms of our plumbers and electricians. They know what makes our lives easier in terms of operations, therefore reducing our operating costs. So, this way of us building it, we’re able to design for what we want and the long-term sustainability low operating costs,” Jiang said.

“We’re not looking to build and flip. We’re keeping that quality there and we want to serve residents for 40, 50 or 60 years.”

In 2025, work started on a 16-home low-rise development in Mount Pleasant. Other new Calgary Housing developments are currently underway in Southview and Midfield Heights.

And in an effort to save on construction and disposal costs, existing structures in Bridgeland and Hillhurst are being redeveloped to bring them up to modern standards.

The creation of the Real Estate and Portfolio Management division resulted directly from Calgary Housing’s shareholder, The City of Calgary, adding a fourth strategic priority to“ increase housing supply and choice for Calgarians.” Calgary Housing’s adoption of the build-buy-partner model is our plan to meet that direction.

Jiang said the existing Portfolio Management team did a lot of work to acquire capital for the build leg of that model. Real estate experience was needed for the newly-named Real Estate and Portfolio Management (REPM) team.

Enter Sarah Quayle. Quayle’s experience with The City of Calgary’s Real Estate and Development Services team, Green Line team, and the West LRT team made her well-suited for the new role. And in the one year since she’s been with Calgary Housing, she and the team assembled with her have already seen successes with funding programs like Build Canada Homes.

“We found ourselves actually being ahead of many of the other applicants across Canada, so our peers across the country and we were successful in getting our applications to the next level of review with Build Canada Homes with 100 per cent success, whereas most of the other organizations were only reaching about 50 per cent success with their applications,” Quayle said.

“What that did is put us in a position of strength, building on Calgary Housing’s  strong reputation across the country.

“All the funders want to work with us. They want to give us funding.”

"We’ve got a really strong, high-performing team that is very interested in making sure they’re helping support success for the future."

Calgary Housing has also made news with the buy and partner legs of its development model, in teaming up with Rohit Homes. In the newly-serviced Midfield Heights area, Calgary Housing is purchasing land and development services from Rohit to produce 176 high-quality rental homes. The landmark deal means Calgary Housing’s specifications will be met while leveraging Rohit’s homebuilding experience to maximize cost certainty, while the Edmonton-based homebuilder carries the risk and enters the non-market housing arena.

Quayle said the development teams are working under the same theme.

“‘Solid foundations for a bold future’ is the theme that the team is moving forward with,” she said. “It’s our first year, we’re doing a lot of things together for the first time and setting up the foundations for the organization.

“We’ve got a really strong, high-performing team that is very interested in making sure they’re helping support success for the future.”

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