Plan Canada Winter 2024 Issue
People’s Choice: Housing Supply
More and more Canadians, young and old, are struggling under the weight of high rents, high mortgage payments, and intense competition for limited housing choices from coast to coast to coast. Policies and funding are now pivoting to confront the housing crisis on a scale not seen in generations. These are extraordinary times for planners. Planners are positioned at all levels of government, First Nations, the private sector, and the non-profit sector to meet the moment and help deliver net new housing supply.
Good planning practice should ideally be informed by unvarnished evidence and a reasoned understanding of development economics and the cause and effect of policy. The Winter 2024 issue of Plan Canada is intended to share critical perspectives of current efforts to expand the housing supply in urban, suburban, and rural communities. These critical perspectives include the pros, cons, uncertainties, intended effects, and, where appropriate, the real or potential unintended consequences.
A systems perspective on housing supply policy is incredibly important when so much policy change is seemingly happening everywhere all at once and layered on top of decades of established policies and planning practice. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- First Nations efforts to expand housing supply for their members and neighbours
- Federal housing plan and efforts such as the Housing Accelerator Fund
- Provincial housing legislation and local government implementation, including prezoning, expedited development approval processes, and elimination of parking minimums
- Private sector delivery of housing and associated challenges, including housing that meets the needs of residents versus the needs of market investors (financialization)
- Non-profit sector delivery of housing and associated challenges, including scale and feasibility
- Factors of production (e.g. labour, materials, land, technology) affecting the delivery of housing
- Evolving role of public engagement (inclusive of people who are experiencing homelessness) and public hearings in decision-making
- Emerging policy ideas in Canada and the available evidence, such as inclusionary zoning and land value taxation
In addition, current efforts to deliver housing have in some instances challenged traditional planning practice and knowledge. Articles are welcome that offer perspectives on the following:
- Values that planners exclusively offer to the design of housing legislation and regulations.
- Trade-offs, real or perceived, between housing supply efforts with other important policy objectives (e.g. coordination of physical and social infrastructure such as schools and transportation; urban design, heritage conservation, public health, environmental, and equity objectives; public participation; land value capture for public benefits, etc.)
- Relevance of space and geography in land use plans when the current imperative is to expand housing supply almost everywhere
- Reflections on the impact of the YIMBY movement.
The co-leads for this issue are Arlene Etchen, who works as a Senior Specialist at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, and Guest Editor Raymond Kan, RPP, MCIP, who is a CIP Board Director and the Manager of Research & Policy at the Planning Institute of British Columbia.
If you would like to discuss a concept for an article, please contact Arlene (arlene.etchen@gmail.com) and/or Raymond (gwaikk@yahoo.ca) by August 30.
The deadline for articles for this issue is October 11.