Here's some positive news. This past week, the Government of Canada announced additional details around its $6 billion Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund (CHIF). The goal of the fund is to accelerate the construction of housing-supportive infrastructure (water, wastewater, stormwater, and solid waste), and the plan is to deliver it through two distinct funding streams.

The first is what they are calling a "direct delivery stream", and this is how the first $1 billion is going to be allocated. Municipalities and Indigenous communities will need to apply, and the funds are expected to be distributed over the next 8 years. But to be eligible -- and this is the positive news -- municipalities will need to have done the following:

• Adopt zoning permitting "four units as-of-right" per lot in all low-density residential areas that have municipal servicing

• Implement a three-year freeze on development charge increases beyond whatever rates were in place on April 2, 2024 (which is when the initial CHIF announcement was made)

Toronto has already done number one. But many/most other municipalities have not, so this should provide a further incentive. As for requirement number two, my understanding is that this is not (yet) in place pretty much anywhere. I haven't heard of any municipalities committing to this. So I'm taking this as incremental good news. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

There are, however, important caveats: item number two only applies to municipalities with populations greater than 300,000 people. This seems unnecessarily high. And I can speak from firsthand experience working in communities below this threshold.

Three-years also isn't very long when it comes to development timelines, especially in this market. A complicated rezoning process might take 3 years, or even 10 years. So this is very much for small-scale projects, which may be impactful or it may not be, depending on quickly the market responds to policy changes like requirement number one.

The last thing I will say, and this relates to yesterday's post, is that freezing is good, but lowering is obviously better.

It was bittersweet to learn last week that Toronto's chief planner -- Gregg Lintern -- will be retiring at the end of this year.

He accomplished a lot during his six-year tenure. Here's an excerpt from a recent Globe and Mail article by Alex Bozikovic:

"...he took the department through significant reforms: allowing new houses in back laneways, then garden suites; eliminating minimum parking requirements; even legalizing four-unit apartment buildings on any lot in the city."

All of this was not easy, as anyone in our industry will attest.

I also got to know Gregg, a little, by way of our development projects. And I can say that he (1) genuinely loved our great city and (2) was always looking for ways to make things better, whether that be through planning policy or through processes internal to City Hall.

Thank you for your service, Gregg.

The City of Vancouver recently published this video talking about missing middle housing. For those of you who are following this trend (and reading this blog), there won't be a lot that is new in the video (although Uytae Lee is great). But I'm sharing it here, anyway, for three reasons. One, it's an example of Toronto being ahead of Vancouver, which wasn't the case with laneway housing. Vancouver started allowing these first. Two, it is further evidence that this shift toward intensifying low-rise residential neighbourhoods is really happening -- and gaining momentum -- all across North America. And three, the City of Vancouver is about to bring forward new multiplex housing policies. So now is a good time to get involved and say things.