UrbanSim Scenario Modeler Helps Canadian Governments Assess Policies to Accelerate Housing Supply
Across national, provincial and municipal levels of government, decisive actions are being taken to accelerate housing supply to meet the needs of all Canadians. UrbanSim models have supported a data driven policy analytic approach by Canadian agencies to evaluate such policies.
Canada is Accelerating Housing Supply at Multiple Levels
National: $4 Billion Housing Accelerator Fund
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) announced in March 2023 a Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF), a $4 billion initiative to help accelerate housing supply across Canada. It provides funding to local governments to fast-track the creation of 100K new homes across Canada by 2024-2025. Proposals to access the funding require that municipal and Indiginous governments submit action plans that include commitments to a housing supply growth target and describe the steps they will take to increase housing supply and speed up approvals.
Provincial: Ontario Passes Bill 23 to Streamline Housing Supply
Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, signed on to an ambitious goal of constructing 1.5 million new homes in Ontario by 2031, and oversaw the passage of Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, November 28, 2022. This is a major step forward for affordable housing in Ontario.
Municipal: City of Toronto Adopts Plan to Allow Multiplexes by Right
Zoning Map of Toronto, courtesy of the City of Toronto
On May 11, 2023, the Toronto City Council moved the housing supply agenda forward in a tangible way by adopting Official Plan and Zoning Bylaw amendments that will permit the creation of multiplexes across the city, sometimes referred to as ‘middle-missing housing’, ending the exclusionary practice known as the Yellowbelt. The plan amendment document states:
“Low-rise residential buildings that contain more than one unit make more efficient use of land, and provide more ground-related housing choices for all residents at all stages of their lives, supporting the vitality of the city's Neighbourhoods. Multiplexes – residential buildings containing up to four units – can deliver additional dwellings while integrating with the general physical scale and development patterns of the neighbourhood. To accommodate the modest intensification needed to house more people, regulations for multiplexes may differ from single-unit buildings to ensure efficient and livable homes for Toronto's residents.”
An article in UrbanToronto by Matias Bessai and Greg White, further explains the impact of this plan change on the Yellowbelt:
“While Toronto's population has never stopped growing on an overall basis, its yellowbelt areas have been seeing population declines over recent decades, leading to closed schools or closed classrooms, along with declines in transit ridership and bus service in single-family home neighbourhoods. The decision could stabilize these areas again, bringing in new families where the infrastructure to support them already exists and/or could be reactivated. Housing demand, meanwhile, is so high that the development of new mid- and high-rise residential buildings is unlikely to see much or any decline. Still, with more flexibility on density in Toronto’s vast expanse of 'yellowbelt' Neighbourhood Areas, the relaxed regulations could play a key role in reducing the urgent unmet demand for housing.”
UrbanSim Scenario Modeler Powered Data-Driven Policy Analysis
CMHC embraced a data-driven approach to supporting their policy mandate to increase housing affordability for all Canadians by launching a multi-year collaboration with UrbanSim several years ago. CMHC used UrbanSim Scenario Modeler to simulate a wide variety of housing policies within the Toronto Greater Golden Horseshoe and the Vancouver metropololitan regions. CMHC developed partnerships on this data-driven policy work with UrbanSim, engaging with numerous other organizations in the public, private, non-governmental and academic sectors in order to align on a data-driven policy analysis agenda to support housing affordability. That multi-year effort is beginning to bear fruit through initiatives like those recently announced at the national, provincial and municipal levels.
As a specific example of this data-driven policy work, Ted Tsiakopoulos, a senior economist in the Housing Markets Policy Division of CMHC, worked with his team and with Paul Waddell and Arezoo Besharati at UrbanSim to analyze the potential development impact of relaxing the restrictive single-family zoning in Toronto’s so-called Yellowbelt. The team simulated the impacts on housing supply of a change in zoning to allow development of multiplex buildings with up to four units. These analyses demonstrated that even a modest change in zoning to allow multiplex development could produce an additional 45,000 housing units in Toronto by 2030.
On October of 2022, Ted Tsiakopoulos presented these findings on the potential impacts and trickle down benefits of such an expansion of modest density housing at the Housing Supply Summit 2.0: Progress Report, a conference hosted by the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON). His presentation was followed by Steve Clark, Ontario’s Housing Minister.
Ted Tsiakopoulos acknowledged that using UrbanSim’s Scenario Modeler allowed CMHC to generate and share valuable insights that provided support and momentum to the adoption of policies such as Toronto’s plan changes. More information about the CMHC analysis is available in a blog by Ted Tsiakopolous here.
This data-driven approach to analyze policy effectiveness to move the needle on housing supply is beginning to achieve its potential to impact policy action across federal, provincial and municipal levels of government. Concerted actions across levels of government to stimulate an increase in both market and non-market housing development, and to align the supply with the investments being made in transit infrastructure, are clear and important steps towards meeting national goals of affordable and sufficient housing for all Canadians.
Acknowledgments
UrbanSim is pleased to have had the opportunity to be a partner to CMHC in its use of UrbanSim Scenario Modeler to support the kinds of analysis that have added momentum to these initiatives in the City of Toronto, the Province of Ontario, and to all of Canada. A special thanks to our partners at CMHC, particularly to visionaries like Bert Pereboom and Ted Tsiakopolous. Our gratitude also goes to the planners, architects, modelers, data scientists and software engineers who worked tirelessly to build the Scenario Modeler tool used to support this data-driven policy agenda..
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