Nova ScotiaA wealthy Halifax neighbourhood with tree-lined streets and grand homes on the Northwest Arm has become one of the latest battlegrounds in the city’s push to build more housing.Multiple covenant decisions are coming before the provincial appeals boardHaley Ryan · CBC News · Posted: Nov 04, 2025 5:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 2 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 6 minutesThe Halifax CAO’s office approved a request to lift a covenant at 1462 Thornvale Ave. in the South End. About a dozen neighbours are appealing the decision. (Brian MacKay/CBC)A wealthy Halifax neighbourhood with tree-lined streets and grand homes on the Northwest Arm has become one of the latest battlegrounds in the city’s push to build more housing.The Birchdale subdivision in the South End has had a restrictive covenant in place since 1941, which states only single-family homes can go on these multimillion-dollar lots.But that changed this July, when Halifax’s chief administrative officer (CAO) approved a request to change that covenant on a Thornvale Avenue property in the middle of the neighbourhood, switching it to the underlying land-use zoning.Owner Michael Risley told neighbours he wants to build a small condo there because the zoning allows up to eight units depending on lot size.“That would be an ugly change to our little corner of paradise,” neighbour Colin MacDonald, a businessman and co-founder of Clearwater Seafoods alongside Michael Risley’s father, John Risley, wrote in an email to other residents and Halifax planning staff.MacDonald is one of roughly a dozen neighbours around the Thornvale property strongly opposed to the move. The group has brought forward one of multiple cases asking the Nova Scotia Regulatory and Appeals Board to overturn the CAO’s decisions on covenants.What is a covenant?Covenants are legal agreements between property owners, and are often brought in by residents themselves or developers when creating new subdivisions. Jamie Baxter, associate law professor at Dalhousie University, said these agreements lay out rules about what someone can or cannot do with their land. Those rules stay, even when properties change hands — often indefinitely.Covenants are civil matters, and municipalities do not enforce them. But in 2023, the provincial government passed legislation that pushed Halifax into the realm of covenants for the first time. The changes allow Halifax’s CAO to alter a covenant that is more restrictive than the current zoning, with respect to height or density. Jamie Baxter is an associate professor of law at Dalhousie University. (Brian MacKay/CBC)Applications to lift covenants began coming into the CAO’s office after Halifax made major zoning changes last spring stemming from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund. Four housing units are now allowed on most lots within the service boundary, and up to eight units a lot — depending on lot size — in most areas of the urban core, like the peninsula.Sarah Brannen, a Halifax spokesperson, said of the 13 covenant decisions made by the end of October, the CAO’s office had approved all but one. So far, five of those decisions have been appealed to the appeals board.“I think it’s pretty piecemeal. I mean, I think it leaves a lot of uncertainties yet to be determined,” Baxter said about the current system. Baxter said a better approach would be for the province to first gather data on where all the covenants are in Halifax, and what they are restricting. Then, provincial and municipal staff or other experts could figure out whether covenants should be lifted “equitably, across communities and neighbourhoods.”“These are all going to vary quite a lot, and sort of without knowing that larger picture, I think that’s a really difficult position to put folks into,” Baxter said.The Thornvale Avenue case is one of three that had preliminary hearings before the appeals board in October.Some of Risley’s neighbours appealing the decision or intervening in the case include developers Gus Ghosn, Allan Shaw of the Shaw Group, and mining executive Brad Langille, president of GoGold.The entrance to Birchdale Avenue in Halifax, a private lane off Coburg Road. Most homes on Birchdale and Thornvale avenues are under restrictive covenants allowing only single-family homes to be built on the lots. (Craig Paisley/CBC)They wrote that a multi-unit development would have “detrimental effects” on the neighbourhood’s character, hurt property values, and create safety issues on the narrow private lanes.The appeal group’s lawyer, Jamie MacNeil, said he knows removing covenants is one way the city is tackling the housing crisis. “The counter to that is individuals always have rights, and so the group of appellants are trying to maintain their rights from their perspective,” MacNeil said in a recent interview.Other appeal cases involve more than 100 residents in another south-end neighbourhood concerned about losing single-family density, and one in Fall River regarding a backyard suite.Baxter said the current “piecemeal approach” could lead to a flood of applications bogging down the CAO’s office, and then the appeals board or even the courts.“There may be much more buy-in from existing residents if there was … kind of a regime, you know, that was designed to treat everyone fairly, rather than particular residents feeling like they’re targeted, either at random or for other reasons,” Baxter said.Lawyers for Halifax (right) and a group of residents appealing the CAO’s decision to lift a Thornvale Avenue covenant, left, sit before the Nova Scotia Regulatory and Appeals Board during a preliminary hearing on Oct. 31, 2025. (Jeorge Sadi/CBC)Heather Fairbairn, spokesperson for Nova Scotia’s Municipal Affairs Department, said in an email that the 2022 Deloitte report on housing barriers showed Halifax staff did not have “adequate authority to make planning decisions.”CBC News asked whether the province would gather more data on covenants, and examine more holistically how and when they could be removed, but the province did not answer those questions.“There is a tremendous variation in the type and use of restrictive covenants. A broad, sweeping tool to discharge all restrictive covenants could have had unintended results, which was considered when amendments to the legislation were being proposed,” Fairbairn said.She said the province is always looking at ways to remove barriers to housing and modernize the governance framework so municipalities “have the tools to address the changing needs of citizens.”Board expected to make decision before new yearHalifax lawyers have asked for three of the cases that have had preliminary hearings before the appeals board be dismissed because they said the appeal grounds were too broad.The board is expected to decide before the end of the year whether it will hear these cases, setting a precedent for what is to come.MORE TOP STORIESABOUT THE AUTHORHaley Ryan is the municipal affairs reporter for CBC covering mainland Nova Scotia. Got a story idea? Send an email to haley.ryan@cbc.ca, or reach out on Twitter @hkryan17.
Halifax has removed the final hurdle to development in some areas and neighbours are fighting back
