Inside Montreal’s Inclusionary Zoning Debate: Who Participates—and What Do They Say?
When Valérie Plante won Montréal’s mayoral race in 2017, housing affordability was at the center of her campaign. Her platform promised a decisive break from business-as-usual urban development: new real estate projects would be required to include 20% social housing, 20% affordable housing, and a minimum of 20% family-sized units (three bedrooms or more). The goal was ambitious—reshape Montreal’s housing supply to better reflect the needs of its residents.
Winning an election, however, was only the beginning. Translating a campaign promise into binding regulation required years of policy design, consultation, and debate. A recent academic paper, Inside Montreal’s inclusionary zoning debate: Who participates and what do they say?, offers a detailed look at how that process unfolded—and what it reveals about inclusionary zoning (IZ) politics more broadly.
Read the ArticleFrom Campaign Promise to Policy
Following Plante’s election, the city began drafting what would eventually become Montreal’s inclusionary zoning bylaw. The paper focuses on the public debate that took place in 2019, prior to the policy’s revision and eventual adoption.
The researchers, Nik Luka, Richard G. Shearmur, Leila Ghaffari, A. J. Bimm, and Josh Medicoff analyzed 147 written depositions submitted to Montreal’s Office de consultation publique de Montréal (OCPM). These submissions came from a wide range of actors, including non-profit housing advocates, private developers, professional associations, and individual residents.
The outcome of this process was the Règlement pour une métropole mixte (RMM), adopted in 2021. Commonly referred to as the “20-20-20 bylaw,” the RMM mandates that qualifying new developments include:
- 20% social and community housing
- 20% affordable (below-market) housing
- 20% family-oriented housing
In effect, the bylaw requires that 40% of units be offered at below-market prices, a relatively stringent requirement by North American standards.
What Is Inclusionary Zoning?
Inclusionary zoning is a planning tool that municipalities use to promote housing diversity and affordability. Rather than segregating land uses or housing types—such as restricting entire districts to single-family homes—IZ encourages a mix of dwelling types and socioeconomic groups within the same developments.
At its core, IZ requires or incentivizes developers to include a minimum proportion of affordable housing units within otherwise market-rate projects. As Mukhija et al. (2015) put it, IZ policies “require or encourage developers to build some affordable housing in market-rate projects.”
Historically, IZ emerged partly as a corrective to exclusionary zoning practices that often worked to exclude lower-income and racialized households. Over time, the emphasis has shifted toward producing affordable housing without major public financial commitments, effectively shifting some costs onto private development.
IZ bylaws vary widely, but they typically differ along five key dimensions:
- Required proportion of affordable units (often 10–15%)
- Definition of affordability (income-based vs. market-based)
- Developer incentives, such as density bonuses or tax exemptions
- Compensation mechanisms for affordable units acquired by public agencies
- Payment-in-lieu options, allowing developers to pay a fee instead of building affordable units
Many bylaws combine mandatory and optional elements, applying requirements only to projects above a certain size.
Who Supported Montreal’s Bylaw—and Who Didn’t?
The study finds that support for the draft bylaw was broad but unevenly distributed.
- 79% of submissions supported the draft policy
- 10% opposed it
- 11% were ambivalent
Among private real estate actors, however, opposition was much stronger:
- 50% were against the bylaw
- 20% were ambivalent
Non-profit and civil-society organizations were far more unified. The researchers found clear evidence of coordinated advocacy, particularly around a shared set of demands:
- Increasing the target to 40% social housing
- Defining affordability based on household income, not market prices
- Creating a rental registry
- Immediate implementation of the policy
- Applying the bylaw to all private developments, regardless of size
Two organizations—the Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain (FRAPRU) and the Comité logement Ville-Marie (CLVM)—submitted nearly identical depositions. Their arguments were echoed across more than 40 submissions, alongside multiple pro forma letters of support.
Private developers, by contrast, were less coordinated but broadly aligned in their concerns. They argued that the bylaw was too stringent, risked undermining project viability, and would ultimately increase housing costs passed on to buyers. Many called for lower affordability requirements, exemptions for smaller developers, or stronger financial incentives.
What Were People Really Debating?
Across all submissions, the researchers identified five recurring themes:
- How affordability should be defined
- Whether IZ should be regulated at a regional rather than municipal scale
- How social housing units are allocated
- The adequacy of developer incentives
- The placement of affordable housing in high-opportunity or exclusive areas
Although the RMM is framed as a tool to promote social mix, most participants treated it primarily as a mechanism to increase the supply of affordable housing—a subtle but important distinction.
Consultation, Participation, and Power
One of the paper’s most striking conclusions concerns the role of public consultation itself. The OCPM, the authors argue, largely lives up to its mandate: it provides a forum for stakeholders to be heard. But it does not bind decision-makers.
As the authors note, the consultation process allows governments to be seen as engaging with the public, and participants to feel heard, even if their recommendations are ultimately set aside. From this perspective, Montréal’s consultation process was successful, regardless of how much it directly shaped the final bylaw.
Why This Debate Matters
Montreal’s inclusionary zoning debate highlights a central tension in contemporary housing policy: how to expand affordable housing supply without constraining overall development. The RMM represents one of the more ambitious IZ frameworks in North America, and its gestation reveals how political mandates, organized advocacy, and market resistance interact in practice.
For cities grappling with housing affordability, the lesson is clear: inclusionary zoning is not just a technical policy tool. It is a deeply political process—shaped as much by who participates, and how they coordinate, as by the rules written into law.
