Position on affordable housing

Building and land development industry’s position on affordable housing and inclusionary zoning

BILD’s housing platform is applicable to all forms of housing, including market-rate housing for purchase, rental and purpose-built rental. A critical component of any housing mix and any discussion on housing is affordable housing (or below-market housing).

The Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) and its members recognize that providing affordable housing is a societal responsibility, and therefore the obligation and the costs must be shared by the public, industry and governments alike and not borne only by the development community and its customers, new home buyers.

BILD supports the use of inclusionary zoning (IZ) as a tool to enable more affordable housing development, provided it includes a partnership model (offsets or incentives). This model is in keeping with the basic premise of IZ, namely that it is a partnership between developers, builders and municipalities to encourage the building of affordable housing units that would not otherwise be built, without unfairly saddling the market-rate new home buyer with the disproportionate burden of providing below-market affordable housing.

For more information on inclusionary zoning and affordable housing in the City of Toronto, see BILD’s report Affordable Housing in the City of Toronto – A Responsibility We All Share.