In the face of an ongoing housing crisis and environmental concerns in B.C., a Vancouver company is pushing for solutions to save homes from the wrecking ball.
Renewal Development specializes in relocating and modernizing houses that were otherwise destined for demolition. When relocation isn’t feasible, the company salvages building materials to minimize waste.
The firm has partnered with Light House, another Vancouver company that works to create healthy buildings and communities, to call on municipalities to create bylaws that reduce construction and demolition waste and support affordable housing.
A Wasteful Process
Renewal Development CEO Glyn Lewis describes what he is seeing in many urban areas of the province as a “demolition epidemic.” The two companies co-authored a report outlining what they found.
“We wanted to understand demolition trends and understand where this was going,” he said, pointing to Canada’s rapidly growing population and the surge in immigration two years ago. “Younger Canadians are looking for homes—there’s not enough housing. Urban landscapes are changing due to densification. You see what used to be single-family neighbourhoods now mid-rises, condominiums, or even towers.”
Lewis supports density as a way to provide more and lower-cost housing, but he argues that the process of achieving that density is “unbelievably wasteful.”
“It’s wasteful from a material perspective, an embodied carbon perspective, and from a housing perspective.”
The report revealed that between 2012 and 2019, Kelowna lost 1,330 single-family homes to redevelopment. Vancouver saw 3,000 demolitions last year, with another 1,000 homes bulldozed on Vancouver Island. Lewis believes the numbers will only rise.
“As the province and municipalities blanket zone more single-family homes for higher density, it’s going to get worse."
He expects Kelowna will see a 35 per cent increase in demolitions over the next 10 years.
Shifting the Industry
The report released by Light House and Renewal Development recommends that municipalities consider several policy changes, including:
- Establishing a pre-demolition assessment for pre-1970 single-family homes to determine whether relocation or deconstruction is viable;
- Imposing a refundable deposit where relocation or deconstruction is feasible;
- Creating a green removal permit, allows homes to be relocated or deconstructed before developers receive a building permit.
According to Lewis, municipalities must push developers and builders to explore viable alternatives before tearing down homes.
“Be it relocation or deconstruction. That would be a game-changer.”
He added that builders and developers also need to change their way of thinking.
“Like smoking on airplanes in the 70s and 80s, just because we’ve been doing it this way for decades doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.”
An Alternative
Lewis points out that there is a better way. In 2024, Renewal Development relocated 27 homes in the Lower Mainland, some of which were sent to First Nations communities in need of housing. Lewis believes they can scale up to moving 200–300 homes a year.
“We find a mid-century home in good condition slated for demolition every week,” he says. “We even find homes built in the last 5 to 10 years every few weeks. They’re out there. We know if we can find them, we can provide a better solution to bulldozing them and sending good material to the landfill.”
He estimates that 60 to 80 percent of single-family homes slated for demolition in B.C. could instead be repurposed or deconstructed.
“There’s a push in this conversation for higher responsibility on developers and builders to, at the very least, sort the materials and send them to recycling instead of binning everything together and sending it to the landfill.”
Municipal Support & Challenges
Kelowna’s Director of Planning and Development Services, Ryan Smith, says the city supports home relocation and recycling.
“If a new company wants to come here and relocate homes—that’s fantastic,” Smith says. “As a result of media reports, a couple of property owners about to demolish homes reached out and said, ‘If anybody wants to take our home, they can have it.’”
However, Smith acknowledges that construction timelines can pose barriers.
“Delaying the demolition of one or two homes because they’re having trouble finding a spot--that delays the construction of 150 new rental homes, that doesn’t make sense in our mind.”
Smith noted that construction waste from demolitions in Kelowna is sent to the Glenmore Landfill but is divided up and some of it is recycled, including concrete.
According to a report to city council, as part of the 2025 Financial Plan, demolition and construction waste contributes 35-42 per cent of materials sent to the Glenmore landfill. "(The) goal is to minimize disposal of waste," the report states.
A Path Forward
Gil Yaron, managing director of circular innovation at Light House, said the impact of demolition waste on municipal landfills is significant.
“The waste coming out of demolition exceeds the amount of solid waste that we generate in our residential daily use,” Yaron said. “It makes up between 30 and 40 percent of our landfills.”
Approximately 2.6 million tonnes of municipal solid waste was disposed of in B.C. in 2022, according to the provincial government. This included waste from construction, renovation, and demolition activities.
Yaron added that some municipalities are already taking action. Victoria has a bylaw requiring homes built before 1960 to be deconstructed, not demolished. Developers must also pay a $19,500 deposit, which is refunded once salvaged materials are documented. Cities such as Burnaby and North Vancouver have similar policies, and across the U.S., many cities have adopted demolition waste reduction measures.
Yaron believes other B.C. municipalities need to follow suit.
“There’s a strong business case for salvaging and reusing materials. Keeping things local makes more sense than ever.”
Lewis agrees.
“Where I think this conversation leads is what are the responsible alternatives to demolition? There are industry solutions out there.”
