Give cities the tools to speed up housing construction

A key barrier which slows down the pace of new home-building stems from complex, backlogged and under-resourced municipal zoning and permitting. Our plan will invest $4 billion in a Housing Accelerator Fund which will grow the annual housing supply in the country’s largest cities every year, creating a target of 100,000 new, middle-class homes by 2024-25.

This application-based fund will offer support to municipalities that grow housing supply faster than their historical average, reduce approval times, help establish inclusionary zoning bylaws, and encourage transit-oriented development. The funding will be flexible: some municipalities need funds for capacity (ie. a surge of planners), some for offsets for land purchases, others for underlying infrastructure, some to offset policies like inclusionary zoning.

Cities and communities that build more homes, faster, will be rewarded through this fund. We will also help speed up the time it takes to build more homes by investing in e-permitting technology and help communities streamline the planning process.

We will also work with municipalities within this program to identify vacant or underused property that should be converted to housing on the principle of use it or lose it – that core urban land should be available for new housing, not left vacant as an unproductive investment property.