Eby’s Housing Targets Hit the Wall: Cities Want the Fund Back

David Eby’s housing strategy has always depended on a simple bargain: Victoria would push municipalities to approve more homes, and the province would help make the homes people actually need financially possible. This week, that bargain looked badly out of balance.

Business in Vancouver, republished by Castanet Kamloops, reported that municipal representatives at the 2026 Union of B.C. Municipalities convention backed a resolution urging the province to restore Community Housing Fund support for stalled affordable-housing projects and to realign provincial housing targets with the funding available to local governments.

That is not a minor wording dispute. B.C.’s official housing-target system gives the province authority to set targets for municipalities with high need and projected growth. The Housing Supply Act itself says the minister may establish housing targets for specified municipalities, including targets tied to housing supply, availability and affordability. In plain English: Victoria built a top-down scoreboard.

But the Community Housing Fund is one of the tools meant to turn that scoreboard into non-market rental homes, co-ops and affordable units. The BIV/Castanet report says the province indefinitely paused new intakes for the fund in Budget 2026, and municipal leaders are now asking for predictable ongoing capital funding to support non-market and affordable housing delivery.

The government has offered a narrower defence. In March, Housing Minister Christine Boyle told the Legislature the Community Housing Fund had not been cancelled or paused indefinitely, said funded projects were continuing, and said the remaining 6,703 homes would be delivered over a longer period as funding allows. That answer does not erase the municipal problem: projects outside the funded pipeline still need a real path from promise to construction.

The claims from councillors should be labelled clearly: Vancouver Coun. Sean Orr told the outlet that some affordable-housing projects that were planned or already underway had to pause or be cancelled after the funding pullback, or had to seek other financing or shift toward market rental models. Victoria Coun. Susan Kim was reported as saying she knew of transitional-housing projects for women fleeing violence that were cancelled as a result of funding being pulled.

Those are reported claims from municipal officials, not court findings. But they are serious enough that the province should answer with a ledger, not another ribbon-cutting backdrop. Which projects lost funding? Which projects are delayed? Which have shifted away from deeper affordability? Which communities are still being measured against provincial targets without the matching capital dollars?

The NDP cannot have it both ways. If municipal housing targets are important enough for Victoria to impose, then the public deserves to know whether the province is financing the affordable part of the promise or merely demanding that city halls hit numbers on paper. A market condo, a below-market rental, a co-op home and transitional housing for a woman escaping violence are not interchangeable boxes on a spreadsheet.

This is the delivery gap voters keep seeing across the Eby government: announce the system, centralize the power, celebrate the target, then ask someone else to explain the missing capacity. Municipal leaders have now put the housing contradiction in writing at UBCM. The premier should respond in writing too — with project names, dollar amounts, timelines and unit counts.

B.C. does not need a recalibrated slogan. It needs homes that open.