Inclusionary Zoning: Best Practices and Lessons Learned for Toronto

The final recommendations for Toronto’s Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) policy are planned to go before City Council in the first half of 2021. The IZ tool has been implemented across the United States and in the United Kingdom as a way to produce new affordable housing by compelling developers to set aside a portion of their new housing units as affordable housing. What lessons can be extracted from these localities to help inform the implementation of IZ in Toronto?

In this video, two of our panelists presented their research, which evaluated how well IZ worked in London, UK and three US regions (San Francisco Bay Area, Washington DC area, and Boston suburbs) to generate more affordable housing and create mixed-income communities. The formal presentations were followed by a discussion on how these experiences from other jurisdictions might be considered in the Toronto context.