Nanaimo met its goal for new housing construction in the last year, with the exception of one-bedroom units and below market rentals.
City council heard an update on housing targets at its July 28 meeting and learned there were 875 units issued occupancy between July 2024 and June 2025 and the target was 783.
Though the city exceeded provincial targets for two- and three-bedroom units, there were only 346 new one-bedrooms in the last year and the target was 625.
“It is a five-year reporting period so we will monitor that. It could just be this year that we didn’t meet the one-bedroom target and if there is something that we need to do to try and incent more one-bedroom units, we have tools that we can do that,” said Lisa Brinkman, manager, community planning.
The annual target for rental units is 554 and the city had 825 new units in the last year.
Brinkman said the city is approaching a three per cent vacancy rate, which means it is more likely for rents to be held at an affordable rate.
Nanaimo also exceeded its target for supportive housing, which is 22 per year. Last year saw 100 new units.
There were no below-market housing units that are not supportive housing in the reporting period and the city had a target of 386.
“Typically we do issue building permits for 50-100 so it is a little unfortunate in this reporting period we didn’t have any but we do have a lot underway,” Brinkman said. She said there are 618 below-market units at different phases of development added rent supplement programs contribute to below-market units.
