What is inclusionary Zoning?
Inclusionary zoning is a tool that allows municipalities to require residential developers to provide a portion of their units at affordable rent or prices. Many of those elected to our new council had hoped that city would be able to require 30 or even 40 per cent of new units built along the light rail transit route to be affordable, permanently.
The province doesn’t want that to happen.
In a proposed regulation released after the municipal election, the province said it proposes to limit the percentage of units to just 5 per cent. The units need to be kept affordable only for 25 years and affordable is defined as 80 per cent of some measure of average market rent that the province has not yet specified. This is all deeply disappointing.
An appropriate proportion of affordable units is closer to 30 per cent of the units, forever.
The province is holding consultations on this regulation until December 9 and your Affordable Housing Team encourages you to take part and urge either rejection of the proposed regulation or amendment to allow up to 30 per cent of the units.
Here are some arguments for that position.
- One of the virtues of inclusionary zoning is that it automatically creates mixed-income communities, integrating lower-income households with households with higher incomes rather than creating low-income ghettos. But achieving that requires a reasonable proportion of lower-rent units. Just five “affordable” units in a 100 unit building with market rents will fall far short of any real mixing.
- The current provincial government earlier limited the use of inclusionary zoning to major transit routes. In Hamilton, that is the light rail transit route. Land near that the LRT route has been given a big boost in value because of its proximity to a new, fast transit system, a boost entirely created by public investment that should produce public benefits like affordable housing units. Providing those units would also make up for the hundreds of older affordable rental buildings demolished for the project. The owners of land along the LRT would likely use their prestige location to charge premium rents or condo prices. They can afford to offset the losses from the affordable units.
- The province says its proposed new regulation would “support government priorities to provide housing that is affordable and within reach of more Ontarians.” But it doesn’t. In fact, the regulation undermines that goal by putting such a low limit on how many affordable units will be built through inclusionary zoning.
- The province’s other argument is that the regulation “would provide more development cost certainty and establish a more consistent approach to inclusionary zoning across the province.” That is indeed an argument for setting a firm provincial standard but isn’t an argument for 5 per cent. A 30 per cent limit would provide equal cost certainty.
You can participate in the consultation by visiting this link. We also encourage you to write to your MPP.