Vancouver's 2022 platform promised to grow the city's housing supply. The clearest record of that is how many new residential buildings council-approved developers get every year.
On track
Roughly 516 new residential buildings were approved for construction each year since Mayor Sim took office — up about 27% from the pre-2023 average.
1The story
What we're trackingGrow the supply of new housing across the city, including more affordable and social homes.— ABC Vancouver's 2022 campaign platform
In plain terms: between 2017 and 2022, the city approved an average of about 405 new residential buildings a year. Since Mayor Sim took office in late 2022, that average has been about 516 a year (2023–2025) — up about 27%. This counts every new dwelling building the city issued a building permit for, from laneway houses to apartment towers.
Green bars are the years after Mayor Sim took office (late 2022).
Sim took office Nov 2022 — compare green years to blue ones.
3The fine print
How we calculated this
We pulled every building permit the City of Vancouver has published (over 51,000 records) and kept only 'New Building' permits whose use is residential ('Dwelling Uses'). Each permit represents one building approved for construction, so counting them per year shows how much new housing the city is actually green-lighting. We compare the average annual count before Mayor Sim's election in late 2022 against the years after. This is our own analysis of public records, not an official city statistic.
City of Vancouver open data — Issued Building Permits · as of 2026-10-21 · Vancouver Promise Tracker — an independent look at whether local leaders deliver on their word.