Fix Housing 12: Infill At Scale Requires More than Just Upzoning

What a pro-active strategy for achieving infill housing looks like

Federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser has been using his Housing Accelerator Fund to get municipalities to “upzone”.

Specifically, he is requiring cities across the country to change their zoning by-laws, to allow up to 4 housing units on any property. Right now, many neighbourhoods are zoned for one single family home only.

Fraser understands that suburban sprawl is not the answer to Canada’s housing crisis. We agree, and have written previously about how sprawl comes at a high environmental price. We have also written about how sprawl is bankrupting cities.

Fraser is trying to encourage cities to create denser communities that are less reliant on cars and have more amenities that can be reached by walking, biking or transit.

Those compact communities require more missing middle housing — the missing middle between single family homes and towers.

Necessary but not sufficient

Fraser is right to use federal money to get cities to upzone. But upzoning alone will not create the housing supply response we need.

Some citizen developers will create basement apartments or backyard cottages on their property.

Small developers will purchase tear-downs and build upmarket semis.

Larger developers will continue to do what they do now. More subdivisions at the edge of town. And towers in the core or near transit.

In other words, upzoning alone will not achieve the missing-middle mixed-use communities that Fraser rightly sees as a big part of the housing solution.

Targets require a strategy

When cities set housing targets, they can predict suburban growth quite easily. There is a certain number of homes per hectare that they can expect. If the land has the appropriate building permissions, they can feel confident that builders will build when the market conditions are right.

It’s different for infill. Cities set targets for infill. But normally cities do not have an actual strategy for making sure that infill happens.

That’s problematic, because the business model for infill does not work at scale. Infill is a secondary focus for the building industry.

Achieving infill housing targets requires that cities put in place a pro-active strategy for incentivizing infill building.

Pro-active strategy for infill

A strategy for achieving infill at scale would include five major elements.

1. Modelling which parts of the city are likely to produce significant infill housing, so that planners can set realistic targets and understand where infrastructure upgrades may be required.

2. Zoning reform, including the removal of junk zoning rules that inadvertently prevent infill construction from happening.

3. A business model that works for builders. Infill with happen at scale when large builders get involved. For that, they need a business model that produces reliable returns with manageable risk. Cities can consider financial incentives, such as reduced development charges for infill.

4. A meaningful and informed public engagement process, to manage the resistance to change that we often see with new housing projects.

5. A plan for financing and constructing the infrastructure and amenities required for growing communities.

BuildingIN, of which we are part of the project team, is one program for municipalities to implement these five elements.

Meeting our housing targets

More and more cities are realizing the value of infill housing in meeting their housing targets. But infill isn’t just going to happen on its own, even with upzoning.

Over decades, cities have been pro-active in doing what needs to be done to allow for more greenfield development.

It’s time for cities to take that pro-active approach and apply it to infill.