Housing Policy

Canada's First Nations Are Using Their Land To Build Dense Housing

Exempt from Vancouver's building restrictions, Squamish Nation is constructing a 6,000-unit residential high-rise.

Christian Britschgi | From the November 2026 issue

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(Photo: Senakw; Revery)

It can be easy to be pessimistic about the potential for zoning reform to solve America's housing crisis. Time and again, headlines herald a major zoning reform that ultimately proves unproductive.

Those in need of a deregulatory white pill need only look to the First Nation housing developments rising around the city of Vancouver, Canada.

Development in Vancouver itself is hemmed in by the standard thicket of zoning restrictions and urban growth controls. That's not the case on a 10-acre former rail yard owned by the Squamish Nation. In 2002, a Canadian court ruled that the........

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