Inside Montréal’s inclusionary zoning debate: Who participates and what do they say?

Inclusionary housing strategies have been implemented for several decades across North America and Europe, and debate on their effectiveness continues apace among scholars and practitioners. Although studies have documented disagreements about site-specific inclusionary mechanisms, formal deliberations leading up to citywide inclusionary policies have rarely been examined. We take advantage of Montréal’s process of citywide public hearings to analyze the debate surrounding its 2019 draft inclusionary bylaw, which requires that all new housing construction offer 40% of units at below-market rates across the entire municipality. We examine 147 detailed written submissions, considering what sorts of stakeholder voiced opinions, the nature of these opinions, and how their responses to the draft bylaw correspond (or not) with scholarly debates on inclusionary housing. We find unsurprising differences in support between advocates of affordable and nonprofit housing, on the one hand, and land developers on the other. Whilst arguments made by the latter group are congruent with academic analyses of IZ, the response from diverse publics also mirrors a certain ambivalence in scholarship about the effectiveness and procedural efficacy of such provisions. The participatory process also served to identify some areas of agreement, suggesting important ways in which inclusionary strategies could be both substantively and procedurally improved.