Every developer has opted to pay Montreal instead of building affordable housing, under new bylaw

Sounds to me like the fines need to be bigger.

They will add this fine to the price of the apartments. It should be really simple: certain % of the units have to be social housing or you will not get building permit, period.

Quotes from Developer Nicola Padulo:

"If people can't afford it, they should not live in the city. The city is made for the privileged."

He says the city wants to "put its nose" in his business.

From the article: "Those fees have so far amounted to a total of $24.5 million — not enough to develop a single social housing project, according to housing experts."

I don't know about construction costs in Canada, but in many cities in the United States, 24 million dollars could renovate at least 120 homes, assuming a cost of $200,000 per renovation. Renovation is more expensive than building new. You could easily build 240 modest homes on undeveloped land with 24 million dollars.

I've left them half a million for administrative costs.

If it's less painful to pay the tax than to do the right thing, then the tax isn't high enough. Keep doubling it until it works, and in the meantime, use the tax revenue for the city to use as low-income housing.

They were stupid to give the developers an out. It's not hard to do some math and figure out what it would take to recoup the penalty in rent or sales compared to the much lower revenue stream of affordable housing.

Now the fine is just part of the cost of doing business. They'll either eat the fine, or more likely spread it out across whatever they were gonna charge for whatever they're building instead of the affordable housing.

You can't give greedy assholes an inch, or they'll take a mile and then bill you for it.

Housing really is one of those aspects of the market that needs to be demonetized and handled by governments.

Developers are the sleaziest slimmest sub-human peices of shit you will ever meet. I used to work in the industry, they are all the same. You could fine them half of the net revenue, and they would still pay the fine over doing anything to help society. It is so lucrative the fine would have to be absolutely enormous to make them not just pay the fine. The fine doesn't really matter anyways because everything is done in credit leveraged against previous projects.

Fines are just the cost of doing business. Fines should be a percentage of gross revenue and at a significant rate. Until then corporations will continue to pay the fine and laugh to the bank.

Making for-profit private organizations do not-for-profit work will never work. They'll either find a way to get around it, or just not do it in the first place.

Won't be surprised if we suddenly see a host of new 4842 square feet projects, or maybe joint projects between multiple companies (all probably owned by the same guy) that split ownership so that nobody builds more than 4842 square feet on a single plot of land.

Or alternatively they'll just hand over useless land somewhere else in exchange for building that massive high value condo or something.

The only way to make affordable housing is to either rely on not-for-profit organizations, or the government to do it themselves.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The Bylaw for a Diverse Metropolis forces developers to include social, family and, in some places, affordable housing units to any new projects larger than 4,843 square feet.

If they don't, they must pay a fine or hand over land, buildings or individual units for the city to turn into affordable or social housing.

According to data released by Ensemble Montréal, the city's official opposition, and reviewed by CBC News, there have been 150 new projects by private developers, creating a total of 7,100 housing units, since the bylaw came into effect in April 2021.

Benoit Dorais, vice-chair of Montreal's executive committee and the member responsible for housing, said the two-year review would be ready this fall, despite being promised this spring.

He says Montreal isn't a good city for investing in property: construction costs are high, there's too much regulation, and developers like him seek as much profit as possible.

AccèsLogis, the province's social housing fund, has only enough money to complete projects already in the works, and the Quebec government said last winter that it will be replaced with a program more attractive to private developers.

The original article contains 829 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

This has always been ridiculous. This kind of Inclusionary Zoning doesn't apply to detached homes, only to highrise condos - that is, to small units that are for many people how they're entering the housing market. Expecting builders to cover affordable housing raises costs for those buyers.

I firmly support affordable housing developments, but expecting housing for those most unable to afford it to be funded by the second-most-unable is insanity. Every other social project is funded by taxpayers, but somehow in a housing crisis where we've a massive shortage of housing, we expect to shove a boat-anchor onto the costs of the very people we expect to solve the crisis and let them bear the cost? That's lunacy.

Why do governments (not just Montreal) seem intent on creating affordable housing in very expensive areas? Surely the effective price of having that housing there could buy a lot more housing somewhere where housing is less expensive. So maybe this outcome is the best one? Perhaps (and I'm making these numbers up) a developer would rather pay a tax of $500,000 than add one unit of affordable housing, and then that $500,000 can be used to buy two units of affordable housing somewhere else where property is cheaper.