The City of Montreal has just announced that it is preparing to update its Regulations for a mixed metropolis, commonly known as Regulation 20/20/20, an initiative that should be applauded. Unfortunately the changes announced are going in the wrong direction. They amplify the mistakes of the past and therefore risk worsening the housing crisis.

The settlement is a failure for good reason. As soon as it came into force in April 2021, it suffered from two confusions. First, he sought to promote social diversity and housing construction. Social diversity – that is, integrating social, affordable and family housing into the same housing complex with other tenants – is an eminently laudable objective.

However, this objective is not necessarily compatible with that of promoting construction. The obligation to give up spaces for social housing and also to include other classes of housing, hence the 20/20/20, constitutes a cost for the developer in lost income and negotiation time with the district concerned (cost often underestimated).

It’s easy to see that this is hardly an incentive to build; but this was clearly not the primary objective of the regulation. The result should therefore not surprise us. With one exception, no project has seen the light of day using the 20/20/20 formula.

It is impossible to know how many developers simply abstained, discouraged by the complexity of the regulations, from constructions never carried out. It is therefore impossible to know whether the regulation has worsened the housing shortage. What is certain is that it was not designed to reduce it.

This could be defended at the time when supply was not the main problem. But in times of housing crisis, favoring the objective of social diversity, as laudable as it may be, is more difficult to defend.

The regulation confuses the social and the private, a problem inherent to regulations of this type. Social housing is needed to meet the needs of the most deprived populations. But precisely, it is a social duty whose financing falls to all taxpayers, like education and health.

Passing the bill on to developers and ultimately to tenants of unsubsidized apartments amounts, so to speak, to privatizing the financing of social housing, without even mentioning the disincentive impact on construction.

Here again, this could be defended in a context where the financing of social housing, a responsibility primarily of higher governments, was lamentably lacking. Both Quebec and Ottawa have shamefully underfunded social housing over the past two decades. We then understand the temptation to look for other sources of financing.

Fortunately, the context is (finally) changing. Quebec and Ottawa have just signed an agreement on housing which will now make some $1.8 billion available to cities and other stakeholders in the sector.

In the new version of the Regulation, the City proposes to increase the penalty for developers who do not agree to transfer units in the proportions 20/20/20. The reader will have understood that this is quite the opposite of what should be done in times of housing crisis. I find it difficult to explain, given what we have learned, the determination to continue on this path.

However, everything is there for a beautiful regulation which would reconcile diversity and construction, and without calling on financing which is not the purpose.

So, rather than penalizing them, the City will now invite developers to propose projects with 20% social housing financed by public funds, therefore at zero cost for the developer. As an additional incentive for developers to choose this option, and therefore promote social diversity, projects with 20% social will be exempt from referendums and other less essential regulatory obligations.

But why stop there? This is a great opportunity for the mayor to implement her desire to accelerate the issuance of permits and give the facilitating cells more room to quickly approve meritorious projects.

Why not, at least while the crisis lasts, limit the obligation of diversity to the social aspect, the most essential? The addition of the affordable and family components, not even to mention the operationalization problems, unnecessarily complicates the approval process, which we frankly do not need in this period of housing crisis. KISS, as the late Pierre Péladeau said. In housing, as in other areas, the best recipe is often the simplest.