Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation

As part of its 2030 goal to ensure that everyone has a home they can afford and that meets their needs, CMHC engaged SHS to identify the most common systemic barriers within the planning system that hinder the creation of affordable housing and to propose solutions to these barriers.

Objective

The work focused on gaining knowledge from developers and affordable housing advocates across ten Canadian cities on local planning issues that negatively impacted their ability to provide access to affordable housing. We highlighted the challenges faced by each city and identified the problems that are systemic in nature (i.e., broad and deep) with the goal of co-designing potential solutions to the identified barriers.

Activities

We hosted ten roundtables across Canada, where participants were asked to identify the main barriers within their respective areas of expertise, what actions were being taken in their region to address these barriers, what they wished was being done differently, and whether they were aware of how these challenges were being addressed in other jurisdictions across Canada or internationally. They were also asked to provide their input on the population groups that experience disproportionate impacts related to the identified barriers.

After completing the roundtables, SHS summarized and synthesized key highlights and insights and prepared summary reports for each location. The project also involved developing a compendium report to present key highlights identified in each location, identify themes, and compare systemic challenges and potential solutions across regions and planning systems.