Legal frameworks

There are multiple pieces of legislation that govern how public land is to be used in British Columbia (British Columbia Law Institute, 2022). Throughout each of these laws, the potential of public land for affordable housing is constrained by fragmented legislative authority, overlapping jurisdictional mandates, procedural rigidity, and limited statutory tools for proactive land deployment (CMHC, 2020).
Much of the public land in BC, particularly Crown land, falls under provincial jurisdiction. Provincial Crown land represents approximately 94% of the province’s land base (Province of British Columbia, n.d.). While this land is governed by provincial legislation, federal real-property laws are also relevant because the federal government owns strategic parcels in BC — often in urban or transit-adjacent areas — and controls how these sites may be transferred or repurposed (Government of Canada, 2024). Historically, federal disposition rules have prioritized fair-market sales (Whiteside, 2019), meaning that without federal cooperation, valuable federal parcels in BC may be sold at market value rather than dedicated to affordable housing (Treasury Board Secretariat, 2025a;b). Recent federal policy shifts, including new housing-focused land-disposition tools under initiatives such as Build Canada Homes (FCM, 2025), aim to expand the ability to transfer federal land for below-market housing; however, these mechanisms are still being implemented, and their long-term effectiveness remains to be seen.

Moreover, since current existing programs have not yet successfully increased housing development enough to alleviate homelessness and Core Housing Need (CHN), developing public land for non-market and affordable housing can be a cost-effective way to help to meet some of the most vulnerable while also implementing policies that increase overall supply (Pomeroy, 2025; Roberts et al., 2025). Persistent barriers to the use of public land for housing include the absence of a permanent provincial land banking framework, the lack of a centralized and transparent land inventory, and uneven geographic reach, with rural and Indigenous communities often excluded from land-based housing initiatives (BCNPHA, 2025; CMHC, 2025; Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation, 2021; Pomeroy, 2021b). These gaps have made affordability gains vulnerable to political and market cycles, undermining long-term stability.

The main barriers for each type of land:

Provincial Crown land remains governed by statutes that fail to prioritize housing need.

Municipalities face legal and political constraints in reclassifying encumbered lands or repurposing parkland (FCM, 2024; Rauf & Frayne, 2023; 2025).

Under standard disposition frameworks, federal surplus land is primarily managed to achieve financial value for the Crown, while affordable housing outcomes typically require dedicated programs such as the Federal Lands Initiative. (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2025a).

For affordable housing, this means outcomes depend less on whether land exists and more on how rules are applied. Figures 1.1 and 1.2 summarize key federal and provincial legislative tools governing public land in BC, organized by their relevance to functions such as land governance and disposition, planning, zoning and housing delivery, financial and infrastructure tools, and environmental and land use functions.

Law on governance and disposition of public land

When evaluating why public land has not been leveraged more aggressively in the face of a generational housing crisis, factors such as a lack of focus on affordable housing, institutional fragmentation, and procedural rigidities limit opportunities in the province:
1. Most legislation (including the Land Act, Community Charter, and FRPFIA) doesn’t even mention policy or protocol related to housing development or public good. This noticeable absence throughout provincial legal structures ultimately makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for certain agencies and government bodies to use vacant or underused lands for housing development.

2. Although BC Housing has statutory authority to acquire and manage land and housing developments, it does not have a dedicated land-banking mandate or standalone expropriation authority and typically must secure sites through negotiated acquisitions and partnerships rather than compulsory acquisition. (Government of British Columbia, 2024). Municipal governments face restrictions on repurposing lands encumbered by covenants, park designations, or other legal protections (Province of British Columbia, 2025d). Federal land disposition is slow and siloed (Office of the Auditor General of Canada, 2025).

3. Even where enabling authority exists, as in the Expropriation Act or MEVA legislation, procedural rigidity, case-specific implementation, and political sensitivities limit scalability and responsiveness.

To counteract this omission, provincial and federal authorities should update the policy to explicitly identify the prioritization of underused or strategically located land for affordable housing as a legitimate and desirable public interest objective (FCM, n.d.). Furthermore, governments should develop streamlined expropriation protocols for non-profit-led affordable housing projects, such as fast-tracked approval processes, standardized valuation methods, and clear inter-agency coordination procedures, to reduce delays while maintaining transparency and compensation fairness (CMHC, 2021). Overcoming these legal and institutional barriers will require legislative amendments, regulatory alignment across levels of government, and new policy instruments designed to facilitate land-based affordable housing delivery on a province-wide scale.

For affordable housing, this means outcomes depend less on whether land exists and more on how rules are applied. Figures 1.1 and 1.2 summarize key federal and provincial legislative tools governing public land in BC, organized by their relevance to functions such as land governance and disposition, planning, zoning and housing delivery, financial and infrastructure tools, and environmental and land use functions.

The main barriers for each type of land:

Regional health authorities

Regional health authority lands, governed under the Health Authorities Act, are managed with a mandate focused on service delivery rather than asset disposition. Despite growing attention to the repurposing of surplus lands around hospitals or decommissioned facilities, health authorities often lack formal mechanisms or incentives to prioritize housing, especially in the absence of provincial coordination. Housing is widely recognized as a key social determinant of health, influencing both physical and mental health outcomes, yet health systems in Canada and similar high income countries are not institutionally structured to play proactive roles in urban development or housing delivery despite evidence of effective health linked interventions (Bentley et al., 2025; Yan et al., 2025).

School board lands

School board lands in British Columbia are governed by the School Act, under which boards may acquire and hold land for educational purposes but may only dispose of land or improvements with the approval of the Minister of Education and Child Care (Province of British Columbia, 1996). Provincial policy on school building closure and disposal requires boards to demonstrate that a site is not required for current or future educational use and to consider alternative community uses prior to declaring property surplus (Province of British Columbia, 2008), with public consultation forming part of this process. These requirements mean that closed or under-utilized school sites are often retained while boards assess long-term educational needs rather than being immediately disposed of.

Post-secondary institutional lands

Post-secondary institutional lands present another jurisdictional challenge. Universities and colleges in BC are governed by enabling legislation such as the University Act and the College and Institute Act, which provide them with significant autonomy, including control over their land use decisions (University Act,1996). In some cases, such as the University of British Columbia, they operate under their own planning jurisdictions, further complicating collaboration with municipalities, with limited or no authority to sell campus lands outright. This regulatory independence can limit municipal governments’ ability to incentivize or require the development of non-market housing on campus lands, even where need is acute, especially for student housing.

Faith-based lands

Faith-based lands introduce a distinct set of jurisdictional and regulatory challenges. Although religious institutions are non-governmental actors, their properties are often treated as quasi-public due to their community-serving functions, tax-exempt status, and long-standing roles in providing social services, gathering space, and informal forms of support. As documented by Fry and Friesen (2020), many faith institutions face structural and regulatory barriers when attempting to adapt or repurpose their lands for evolving community needs. Redevelopment is further constrained by internal denominational governance and municipal land-use controls, as faith-based properties are frequently zoned for institutional or religious use only, requiring rezoning to permit multi-unit residential development.

Crown corporation lands

Crown corporation lands, held by entities such as BC Hydro, TransLink, and ICBC, are governed by specific provincial statutes and mandate letters that emphasize financial performance, infrastructure delivery, and operational independence. These lands fall outside municipal control and generally require Treasury Board or Cabinet-level approval for any disposition (Auditor General of Canada, 2021). While their strategic priorities rarely align with affordable housing mandates, they are not fixed: mandate letters can be revised with changing political directions, creating both opportunities and uncertainties for housing-focused land use strategies.

A notable example is TransLink’s Real Estate Development Program, which has advanced a mixed use development near the future Arbutus SkyTrain Station, but most transit stations in Metro Vancouver remain under-utilized for integrated housing directly above or adjacent to station infrastructure, reflecting broader gaps in aligning land use planning with transit strategy (Coriolis Consulting Corp. & Wollenberg Munro Consulting Inc., 2019; OECD, 2020; TransLink, 2023; TransLink, 2024).

Underused federal and provincial lands situated near high-frequency transit corridors—such as the SkyTrain in Metro Vancouver or BC Transit nodes in Prince George and Kelowna—are not systematically prioritized for non-market housing development. This represents a missed opportunity, as noted by the Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA) (2021), the failure to align affordable housing delivery with transit infrastructure investment. In Ontario, instruments such as Section 37 density bonusing, development charges, and developer obligations have generated hundreds of millions of dollars tied to rezoning and transit-oriented growth, enabling infrastructure investments and, in some cases, affordable housing (Sorensen, 2024; Biggar & Friendly, 2023). By contrast, British Columbia has more limited legal authority over land disposition and development contributions compared with other jurisdictions, and its policy frameworks for capturing value uplift are fragmented and often unpredictable, meaning provincial and municipal governments cannot systematically require or capture value from private development for public purposes.

Mechanisms such as Community Amenity Contributions (CACs) are negotiated locally on a project-by-project basis and can fund a variety of community benefits, including parks, community centres, or affordable housing, depending on municipal policy priorities (LaMontagne, 2019; City of Vancouver, 2025). Because CACs are discretionary and vary by municipality,, BC lacks a standardized, predictable mechanism to channel development value into non-market housing, limiting the ability to leverage private development for sustained affordability outcomes.

There are many examples of public parcels that are in well-serviced urban areas, making them uniquely positioned for housing because they are a legacy of public service delivery. Governments historically assembled land for schools, utilities, transit corridors, and administrative offices—uses that, by necessity, were located in well-serviced, accessible areas to serve the public (Suttor, 2016). Now, as cities densify and needs evolve (e.g., school consolidation, more efficient utilities), many of these central parcels are underused or surplus (Pomeroy, 2017). This makes them ideal for higher-density housing, as they already benefit from existing infrastructure like water, sewer, and transit, requiring minimal new public investment (Anderssen et al., 2024).

ORPHAN HEADLINE: Infrastructure and environment barriers

Infrastructure, Servicing Challenges, and Environmental Constraints Affecting Affordable Housing on Public Land in British Columbia

Stakeholder consultations in our Workshop Report identify infrastructure shortfalls as a primary impediment to leveraging public land for affordable housing. Many parcels lack baseline data on serviceability, utility access, or environmental constraints (Roberts et al., 2025). The absence of essential infrastructure components—including water, sewer, transit, road, and utility connections—can increase development costs by 20–40% per housing unit and extend approval timelines significantly (Metro Vancouver, 2023). These financial burdens almost exclusively affect the developers: most often non-profit, Indigenous, and community-based organizations, who typically operate under tight financial margins and limited capital (CMHC, 2020; Pomeroy, 2021b). According to developers and non-profit stakeholder interviewees, servicing and mediation costs often kill prospective projects (Roberts et al., 2025). Additional risk factors such as insurance availability, emergency service access, and distance from transit or fire services further constrain site viability and delay project delivery.

Publicly-owned lands in BC generally fall into three categories based on infrastructure readiness: fully serviced and permit-ready; partially serviced requiring upgrades or legal adjustments; and raw or constrained land lacking infrastructure or encumbered by conflicting land use agreements (CMHC, 2023). The majority fall into the latter two categories (Roberts et al., 2025; FCM, 2023) and thus require substantial capital investment, multi-agency coordination—including municipal engineering departments, provincial ministries, utility providers, and Indigenous governments, and legal processes such as subdivision and covenant clearance to become development-ready (CMHC, 2020; FCM, 2023).

There is a lack of dedicated infrastructure funding (Pomeroy, 2017) tailored specifically to affordable housing projects on public land. Existing provincial and federal capital programs, including BC’s Community Housing Fund and CMHC’s National Housing Co-Investment Fund, generally assume sites are pre-serviced, limiting their applicability to public lands that may need upgrades to accommodate density, or rural and peri-urban communities which may still be unserviced. Where these projects are viable, lengthy servicing approvals and poorly aligned interdepartmental coordination commonly extend project timelines by years, even on municipally-owned lands, which tend to be better serviced than higher order government parcels (CMHC, 2020; Canada-British Columbia Expert Panel on the Future of Housing Supply and Affordability, 2021; Pomeroy, 2017). In BC, outer municipalities possess available land but insufficient infrastructure, while urban cores have better servicing but face acute land scarcity. Like urban centres, rural, northern, and Indigenous communities contend with land scarcity and market pressures, while additionally facing infrastructure deficits and high development costs (Government of British Columbia, 2023).

British Columbia is a mountainous and ecologically rich province, which means sites located on slopes, within floodplains, or adjacent to sensitive ecosystems may trigger environmental assessment requirements, such as hydrological studies, biodiversity impact assessments, and mitigation plans under the BC Environmental Assessment Act (Government of British Columbia, 2018), particularly for projects exceeding disturbance thresholds or impacting protected areas. Environmental hazards, such as flood risk, wildfire exposure, and unstable terrain, exacerbate infrastructure shortfalls by increasing servicing complexity, and compliance requirements (Province of British Columbia, 2018). While these factors are vital to preserving ecosystems, drinking water, and the environment surrounding a development, these expensive studies are generally required by government and paid by the developer, which inhibits affordable and non-market housing delivery. Servicing deficits and ecological barriers structurally exclude lower-income communities from well-located, adequately serviced land (Stantec Consulting Ltd., 2023).

Institutional Barriers

The absence of a centralized public land database

Public land ownership data in British Columbia is comparatively comprehensive and well-maintained, primarily due to the centralized cadastral mapping system known as ParcelMap BC, managed by the Land Title and Survey Authority (LTSA). However, while BC has one of the best systems, there are still multiple agencies holding different pieces of data, and each agency has its own barriers to access and data gaps which make the consolidation of data time-consuming, difficult, and expensive (Brodeur et al., 2020; LTSA, n.d.). Land registries, cadastral systems, and property databases are siloed and largely non-interoperable (Connolly et al., 2025). Provincial platforms like ParcelMap BC or the Integrated Land and Resource Registry (ILRR) are disconnected from federal or Indigenous land data, with no standardized metadata for zoning, tenure, or development readiness (LTSA, n.d.; Province of British Columbia, 2025). This hampers comprehensive land assessments, cross-jurisdictional planning, and evidence-based decision-making. Data limitations constrain evidence-based land use decisions for affordable housing (Urban Matters, 2025).

Crown land datasets remain difficult to access and spread across multiple sources. Key technical platforms—such as ParcelMap BC, ILRR, and BC Assessment—are not interoperable and often unavailable to local governments or non-profit developers. This fragmentation hampers coordinated planning and limits the province’s ability to strategically prioritize public lands for housing (Brodeur et al., 2020).

Federal data on public lands is even more fragmented. The Public Land Bank (Canada Lands Company and PSPC) only includes selected surplus sites and does not align spatially with ParcelMap BC or provincial systems (Connolly et al., 2025). Many federal land inventories — including holdings of DND, Parks Canada, and various portfolios managed by PSPC/Canada Lands Company (CLC) — are managed by separate custodial agencies and often lack standardized, up to date metadata, comprehensive search tools, and cross departmental alignment (CLC, 2024). These weaknesses complicate efforts at integrated land use planning and housing development (Connolly et al., 2025). Other datasets, such as municipal zoning maps, urban infrastructure layers, and ALR boundaries, are siloed and inconsistently formatted (LTSA, n.d.).

As discussed, federal lands are governed by a variety of different legal regimes, such as the Federal Real Property and Federal Immovables Act and the Canada Lands Survey Act (Canada Lands Survey Act, 1985; FRPRIA, 1991), which results in separate datasets and incompatibility with provincial or municipal systems, preventing seamless integration of land, ownership, and zoning data across levels of government.

In addition to data access barriers, data formats are generally inconsistent, including some that are static or non-machine-readable. Official Community Plans (OCPs), where available, differ significantly in level of detail, how frequently they are updated, and how easily they can be linked to other spatial datasets (Desjarlais, 2016). Furthermore, there is limited metadata and tagging, since many datasets lack standardized fields to indicate land ownership type (e.g. public vs. private), housing suitability, infrastructure readiness, or zoning alignment (Desjarlais, 2016; Urban Matters, 2025b; Natural Resources Canada, 2025a;b). As a result, identifying and prioritizing suitable public lands for non-market housing is time-consuming and prone to error, reflecting broader challenges in Canada’s geospatial data infrastructure where inconsistent metadata standards limit the usability and integration of cadastral and land data (Natural Resources Canada, 2025a;b; Desjarlais, 2016).

This data fragmentation presents serious operational challenges for governments and housing providers seeking to identify developable public land (Brodeur et al., 2020; Natural Resources Canada, 2025b).

Legal Reform

BC’s evolving policy landscape demonstrates both long-standing leadership and persistent structural gaps that shape the ability to leverage public lands for affordable housing. Historically, coordinated public investment and land-based non-market housing delivery allowed British Columbia to secure long-term affordability, diverse tenure types, and mixed-income communities. Early mixed-income developments on publicly owned land highlighted the strategic potential of land policy to advance affordability and equity, while programs such as Homes BC and Housing Matters BC showed that coordinated provincial oversight, public land use, and partnerships with non-profit providers can achieve scale. However, temporary affordability protections, fragmented land management, and a lack of centralized stewardship limited the durability and reach of these initiatives.

1. Develop a comprehensive land strategy: today, despite significant provincial investments, BC still lacks a comprehensive public land strategy, a centralized inventory of public lands, and clear mechanisms linking land disposition to long-term affordability outcomes. Contemporary efforts under Homes for BC, Homes for People, and BC Builds demonstrate renewed ambition to embed public and non-profit lands into housing delivery. Yet challenges remain in transparency, land prioritization, permanent affordability, and the avoidance of reactive, crisis-driven land deployment.

2. Create an agency to acquire, lease, and manage public lands: current conditions point toward opportunities to institutionalize mechanisms for land acquisition, leasing, and stewardship (School of Cities, U of T, 2024); embed affordability protections into land-based housing initiatives; and develop a transparent intergovernmental land inventory in collaboration with municipalities and Indigenous governments (Kukutai & Taylor, 2016). Evidence from past programs demonstrates that aligning public land contributions with capital investment and non-profit partnerships consistently supports durable affordability, whereas periods emphasizing short-term subsidies or reactive acquisitions have been less effective in building a resilient non-market housing sector. A coherent, land-focused strategy would allow BC to systematically leverage public and non-profit lands rather than relying on ad hoc responses or one-off program cycles.
Ultimately, the policy evolution in BC shows that public land functions most effectively as a long-term affordability asset when supported by clear mandates, sustained coordination between levels of government, and enduring governance structures.
Embedding land-based approaches into the core of housing policy, and ensuring intergovernmental alignment, is essential for moving from episodic interventions toward a durable, proactive public land strategy capable of supporting equitable, non-market housing delivery across the province.

Jurisdictional Reform

While BC possesses an extensive set of statutory and regulatory instruments relevant to public land management, the existing legislative landscape is neither fully aligned with affordability goals nor sufficiently integrated across levels of government. Key statutes remain anchored in market-based, administrative, or resource development priorities, with limited explicit attention to non-market housing outcomes (CMHC, 2020). Provincial Crown land remains governed by statutes that fail to prioritize housing need, while municipalities face legal and political constraints in reclassifying encumbered lands or repurposing parkland (Rauf & Frayne, 2023).

Meanwhile, innovative tools, such as housing agreements and the amendments that converted certain agreements to Affordable Housing Covenants, housing agreements, and DCC waivers, are often underused or inconsistently applied due to local discretion, procedural complexity, or lack of provincial standardization (BC Housing, 2018; FCM, 2024; Province of British Columbia, 2025b). Evidence from municipal case studies and expert reviews supports this uneven application, highlighting the need for standardized provincial guidance (FCM, 2024).

To unlock the transformative potential of public land for affordable housing, legislative reforms must go beyond ad hoc solutions: a suite of systemic interventions could include: insert graphic stuff here

Moreover, reforms must be attuned to tenant protections, Indigenous land rights, environmental safeguards, and infrastructure alignment to ensure that public land is not only available, but equitably and sustainably used (First Nations Information Governance Centre, 2019). This can be done by requiring tenant consultation, formalizing Indigenous consent and co-management, enforcing environmental assessment and remediation standards, and aligning land disposition with local infrastructure planning. Additionally, consistent and binding tenant and community protections are needed in BC to prevent displacement and support housing stability during public land redevelopment, addressing gaps in municipal bylaws and the Residential Tenancy Act (Province of British Columbia, 2025e).

Addressing jurisdictional barriers

The Standing Committee on Human Resources (2022) has emphasized that without enforceable intergovernmental agreements, well-located federal and provincial land assets risk being disposed of on an ad hoc basis, withheld indefinitely, or sold at market value, without any systematic assessment of their suitability for affordable housing. Overcoming the challenges impeding the use of public land for affordable housing will require deep structural reforms.

1. Establish bi-lateral agreements
   Formal bilateral agreements between the federal government and the Province of BC would provide a foundational framework to improve coordination and strategic alignment in the disposition of public lands for affordable housing (Whitzman, 2024). These agreements should supersede other competing priorities, including municipal planning prerogatives where necessary, and go beyond symbolic collaboration to outline enforceable commitments to identify, assess, and allocate surplus land specifically for non-market housing. Critical components would include clearly defined affordability benchmarks that align across jurisdictions, implementation timelines, mechanisms for public reporting, and protocols for early consultation with Indigenous and municipal governments. Similar models exist in other domains, such as the Canada Infrastructure Program and the Low Carbon Economy Fund, which offer templates for structured, cross-governmental collaboration that could be adapted to housing and land use (Government of Canada, 2025).
2. Embed housing objectives into legislation
   This includes amending the Land Act and the FRPFIA to include explicit mandates and considerations for affordability and social use. Specifically, both statutes should be revised to require that all surplus or underused public lands undergo assessment for housing suitability prior to disposition, and that affordability be treated as a core public benefit that can complement or, in certain cases, take precedence over financial return or alternate co-development uses. As Suttor (2016), Pomeroy (2017, 2021b) argue, the absence of statutory requirements to prioritize housing allows departments and ministries to default to seeking financial outcomes. Legislative reforms of this nature would institutionalize a “housing-first” principle in public land and property law and align asset management with long-term social and climate equity goals.
3. Create a land governance agency
   Such a body should be vested with cross-jurisdictional authority to manage multi-level land portfolios for a variety of uses, including affordable housing. Its mandate would include identifying surplus land across federal, provincial, and municipal inventories; overseeing pre-development assessments and servicing coordination; and ensuring equitable allocation of land to non-profit, co-operative, and Indigenous housing providers. Models for such governance entities exist in other federated systems, such as Infrastructure Ontario or the Netherlands’ Rijksvastgoedbedrijf (Central Government Real Estate Agency, 2025), which manage land in accordance with public interest objectives, including sustainability and affordability. While these organizations demonstrate the potential of centralized land management, their effectiveness is mixed. Infrastructure Ontario, for example, has successfully delivered major public infrastructure projects and leveraged land assets for some public benefit, but critics note challenges in transparency, accountability, and fully integrating social objectives like affordable housing (Infrastructure Ontario, 2025). This suggests that adopting similar models in BC or federally would require careful design, clear mandates, and robust oversight to ensure that housing and social objectives are genuinely prioritized rather than subordinated to financial or operational imperatives. Furthermore, several supporting strategies are critical to enable the primary recommendations outlined above. They focus on building local capacity, harmonizing processes across jurisdictions, and improving data infrastructure to ensure that federal, provincial, and municipal lands can be efficiently and equitably leveraged for affordable housing.
4. Harmonize policies across all levels of government
   Governments should pursue harmonization of disposition policies, environmental review processes, and infrastructure servicing standards across levels of government to reduce procedural delays and enable more agile public land development (Whitzman, 2024). Federal and provincial agencies currently apply different rules on tenure conversion, appraisal methods, environmental assessment thresholds, and public consultation, creating friction in intergovernmental collaboration (CMHC, 2023). Harmonization does not necessitate uniformity but rather coordinated protocols and standardized affordability definitions that support cross-jurisdictional project delivery (Swanson, 2021). Efforts to align development readiness criteria and enable modular or phased servicing solutions are especially urgent in the context of non-profit and Indigenous housing development, where administrative burdens and financing constraints are acute (Pomeroy, 2020). Streamlining these frameworks will help unlock underused public lands and accelerate the delivery of deeply affordable housing aligned with equity and climate resilience goals (Whitzman, 2024).
5. Create and publish comprehensive land data
   The implementation of a comprehensive, open-access land data infrastructure is crucial to supporting transparent and evidence-based public land decision-making. This system should integrate parcel-level data on ownership, tenure status, legal encumbrances, zoning, servicing availability, environmental constraints, and proximity to transit and services (Urban Matters, 2025).

Taken together, these reforms would help to reduce duplication, align institutional mandates, and create a coherent public land strategy to support urgently needed housing delivery in BC and across Canada. Without such systemic change, public land will continue to be managed as a fragmented asset rather than as a shared tool for public benefit.

Infrastructure and environment

Infrastructure and environmental barriers remain critical impediments to realizing the potential of public land for affordable housing in British Columbia. These challenges, ranging from inadequate servicing and capacity gaps to environmental constraints and jurisdictional fragmentation, disproportionately affect rural, northern, and under-served communities. Despite emerging tools like the Digitally Accelerated Standardized Housing (DASH) platform, which is an all-in-one platform that helps developers, and designers find standardized designs and components that best fit their project, and the BCPLM, an integrated geospatial platform to support site prioritization and inter-agency coordination in BC, implementation remains uneven and insufficiently integrated into formal planning and regulatory systems in the province. Addressing these barriers requires coordinated, equity-focused interventions, including dedicated infrastructure funding, regulatory reform, and intergovernmental alignment.

Dedicated infrastructure funding: Evidence indicates that dedicated infrastructure funding tailored to low-density and remote contexts reduces upfront costs, improves site readiness, and addresses cost-income mismatches (Pomeroy, 2017; FCM, 2018).

Scaling programs like Infrastructure Canada’s Rural and Northern Communities Infrastructure Stream provincially would prioritize affordable housing on public lands, while municipal precedents—including Vancouver’s Community Housing Incentive Program and Toronto’s Open-Door Program—demonstrate the feasibility and impact of such funding mechanisms (City of Toronto, 2022; Roberts et al., 2025).

Capacity building: The government could help make under-serviced sites viable for governments and non-profit housing providers by offering technical guidance, standardized site assessments, and coordination support (Canada-British Columbia Expert Panel on the Future of Housing Supply and Affordability, 2021), reducing development risk and delays. Expanding technical assistance programs, such as modular support teams providing planning, engineering, and asset management expertise, has proven effective in supporting under-resourced jurisdictions (Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation, 2021). Programs such as FCM’s Green Municipal Fund and the Municipal Asset Management Program offer replicable models, but BC-specific interventions are necessary to reflect local governance realities (FCM, 2026; Green Municipal Fund, n.d.).

Land banking: Urban and peri-urban interventions are needed to address land scarcity and market pressures in high-demand areas. Land banking and inclusionary zoning can preserve public lands for non-market housing while moderating cost escalation (Pomeroy, 2021a). Streamlining approvals and offering DCC waivers can reduce time frames and financial burdens (Metro Vancouver, 2023; Province of British Columbia, 2025a). Regional coordination is also essential to overcome fragmented planning across municipal boundaries, aligning infrastructure and housing objectives in growth corridors (FCM, 2020).

Phased infrastructure development: Modular or phased servicing approaches—where infrastructure like water, sewer, and roads are delivered incrementally in alignment with housing development—can reduce upfront capital costs and improve feasibility on constrained public land parcels. This approach allows developers to begin building initial phases of housing while deferring some infrastructure investments to later stages, lowering early financial risk (Roberts et al., 2025). By integrating phased infrastructure delivery into planning and financing strategies, public land projects can become more development-ready and financially viable, particularly for non-profit and Indigenous housing providers operating with limited capital (Ibid).
Innovative and context-appropriate servicing models: Provincial incentives—such as grants or expedited permitting—combined with updates to servicing bylaws and subdivision standards (which regulate infrastructure requirements like road widths, utility hookups, and drainage systems), can help scale these solutions and align development practices with contemporary environmental and affordability goals (Province of British Columbia, 2023; 2025e).

Institutional Reform

There is growing consensus among planners, advocates, and technical experts (Pomeroy et al., 2025; Urban Development Institute, 2021) that BC would benefit from a centrally coordinated, province-facilitated inventory of public lands, integrating data on ownership, tenure, zoning, and infrastructure. Examples include calls for improved land information systems, which emphasize the need for cross-jurisdictional coordination in public land management (Canada-British Columbia Expert Panel on the Future of Housing Supply and Affordability, 2021), as well as recommendations from FCM (2020) and advocating for evidence-based land disposition strategies.

To address delays in municipal land approvals, higher levels of government can sometimes bypass standard procedures by fast-tracking rezoning, as seen in Halifax’s provincially managed Special Planning Areas (Government of Nova Scotia, 2025). Given that some communities in Canada have rezoning timelines that extend months and even years, leveraging public lands for affordable housing can significantly expedite processes (Canadian Home Builders’ Association, 2023).

Other emerging tools such as the DASH and the Facility Condition Index (BC Housing, 2021) offer promising avenues to standardize site assessments; however, their implementation remains uneven. The BCPLM, led by HART, aims to develop an integrated geospatial platform to support site prioritization and inter-agency coordination. While it does not solve structural affordability or infrastructure gaps, it can help streamline decision-making and reduce redundancies across agencies, serving as a practical tool within a broader, systemic strategy, helping to expedite decision-making and reducing redundancies. There is a need to embed hazard mapping—covering slope instability, wildfire risk, and flood zones—into site assessment tools such as DASH. This would allow flexible filtering rather than hard disqualification of marginal lands, thereby supporting non-profit and Indigenous housing providers in pursuing developments on sites currently excluded due to existing practices. Ultimately, climate-related planning and building standards raise initial costs but are widely regarded as a public good, ensuring that new developments are resilient, energy-efficient, and climate-adapted.

BCPLM is critical because it will demonstrate how a comprehensive public land database can integrate fragmented data sets to identify high-impact sites for affordable housing. Without interoperable, standardized, and open data-sharing frameworks (Williamson et al., 2003), province-wide analysis remains bottlenecked. BCPLM also shows the value of tagging protocols for consistent land-use classification and of public-facing access to strengthen transparency, trust, and housing advocacy.

Case Studies on Public Land Use

Examples from BC

As the province seeks to scale non-market supply, there are several examples that highlight best practices in public land governance, affordability protections, land tenure models, and partnership structures. Both national and international, the case studies demonstrate that the strategic deployment of public land requires more than land availability. It hinges on strong governance institutions, intergovernmental coordination, transparent stewardship mechanisms, and policies that prioritize long-term affordability. Together, these examples provide a roadmap for BC to advance equitable and durable approaches to public land development that align with its housing, climate, and reconciliation objectives.

BC Builds and Caledonia Re-development

BC Builds is a province-wide program led by the Ministry of Housing and supported by BC Housing, focused on accelerating rental housing development by identifying and activating underused public, Indigenous, and non-profit lands, providing a coordinated framework for approvals, financing, and intergovernmental collaboration. By providing a centralized framework for project coordination, and leveraging provincial support for pre-development planning, BC Builds ensures these projects are not ad hoc but instead integrated into a broader, systematized pipeline of affordable and below-market rental housing development. It exemplifies a coordinated model for aligning land stewardship with streamlined development processes, reduced permitting timelines, and innovative financing tools to expand housing supply (Province of BC, 2024). Through targeted intergovernmental partnerships and land-based agreements, BC Builds assesses suitability, matches sites with development partners, and structures agreements to streamline project initiation and approvals across jurisdictions (Province of British Columbia, 2024).

A key preceding example is the Caledonia Redevelopment in Victoria, which successfully demonstrated how tripartite agreements between a school board, local government, and a non-profit housing provider can leverage institutional land for affordable housing while retaining public ownership. Under a long-term lease, the school board preserved land control while enabling housing development, maintaining public accountability and simplifying inter-agency coordination (Housing Central, 2024). This project proved that underused institutional lands can be effectively repurposed for non-market housing. BC Builds creates a provincial framework to systematically coordinate such land access across multiple ministries and public agencies, streamline legal and policy alignment, and provide standardized tools to embed long-term affordability at scale (Province of British Columbia, 2024b).

The Vancouver Community Land Trust

The Vancouver Community Land Trust Foundation (CLTF) represents a prominent and evolving model of land-based, non-market housing delivery in British Columbia (CHFBC, 2018; Wong, 2013). Its institutional design reflects a broader shift toward de-commodified land strategies and intermediary-led coordination in urban housing systems.

At the core of the CLTF’s operating framework is the 99-year leasehold model, which enables public and institutional landowners—including municipal governments, faith-based institutions, co-operatives, and Indigenous organizations—to retain land ownership while delegating the development and management of rental housing to qualified non-profit operators (Goëtzmann, 2024). This legal separation of land tenure from built form aligns with international community land trust theory, which positions permanent leaseholds as a means of insulating land assets from speculation and preserving affordability in perpetuity (Davis, 2010; Patten, 2015).

Institutionally, CLTF functions as a centralized land and asset aggregator, a role increasingly recognized in planning literature as critical to overcoming fragmented land ownership and project-by-project inefficiencies (Patten, 2015). By assembling underused land from public and community sources into a unified portfolio, CLTF is able to negotiate pooled financing arrangements, coordinate cross-site infrastructure, and achieve economies of scale in delivery—while preserving the operational independence of its development partners. Such models are particularly effective in contexts where fragmented land ownership impedes comprehensive development.

Burnaby Non-Market Housing on City Land

Since 2015, the City of Burnaby has implemented a scalable land-lease model to facilitate the development of non-market rental on municipally-owned land (City of Burnaby, 2021). Through transparent and standardized Requests for Proposals, the city grants long-term nominal or below-market leases to non-profit and private housing providers with explicit affordability requirements tied to non-market outcomes. This approach enables the delivery of non-market housing while protecting against speculative market pressures in Burnaby’s high-demand real estate context (Lee & Hemingway, 2024; Lohr, 2017).

The city’s land contributions are frequently paired with provincial funding streams, particularly through BC Housing’s Community Housing Fund, which provides both capital and operating support (Government of British Columbia, 2025). This multi-level coordination (Whitzman, 2024) enables the delivery of deeply affordable housing, including a significant share of larger, family-oriented units, while reducing reliance on private equity—a constraint often associated with reduced affordability (Government of British Columbia, 2023).

A defining feature of Burnaby’s model is its process; institutional alignment across planning, housing, and legal departments further reduces costly administrative delays (City of Burnaby, 2021).

Toronto’s Housing Now Program

Launched in 2019, Toronto’s Housing Now program is a city-led initiative that earmarks municipally-owned sites for redevelopment to address housing affordability through strategic leasing of public land. The program aims to deliver more than 17,000 residential units, with a minimum of 33% designated as permanently affordable housing (City of Toronto, 2022). This municipally coordinated approach reflects a coherent land governance model that integrates land use, housing policy, and infrastructure planning to generate non-market and mixed-income housing at scale.

To accelerate delivery, the City pre-zones sites and offers financial incentives such as deferred development charges, exemptions from planning fees, and expedited approvals (City of Toronto, 2022). While this integrated framework reduces risk and aligns development with public affordability goals, critics note that progress has been slow, with only a small fraction of the planned sites breaking ground over the past decade, highlighting challenges in translating policy design into timely housing outcomes.

For municipalities in BC, particularly those within Metro Vancouver, the Housing Now model offers actionable lessons. The program demonstrates how municipalities can condition land disposition on affordability outcomes while retaining long-term public control, through continued public land ownership and long-term leases of up to 99 years, with affordability secured for a comparable duration (City of Toronto, 2022; 2023; CreateTO, 2025). Furthermore, Toronto’s strategy underscores the value of policy clarity: public land releases are tied to measurable affordability, inclusionary zoning benchmarks, and lease agreements that codify these requirements. British Columbia could build on this approach by establishing standardized provincial guidelines for land disposition, and integrating long-term monitoring of affordability outcomes to ensure that non-market housing targets are consistently met across municipalities.

Toronto’s CreateTO

CreateTO, Toronto’s centralized land development agency, was established in 2018 to manage the City’s real estate portfolio, proactively identify and prepare municipally owned land for redevelopment, and deliver public benefit outcomes such as affordable housing, economic development and community infrastructure (City of Toronto, 2025; CreateTO, 2025). In contrast, BC Builds functions as a provincial program that leverages underutilized land, provides low interest financing and grants, and accelerates approvals to support rental housing for middle income households (rather than a dedicated land activation agency controlling site assembly) (BC Builds, 2024). To translate CreateTO’s proactive model to the provincial scale in British Columbia, the province could establish a dedicated land activation unit with authority to inventory assets across ministries and local governments, facilitate pre zoning and lease structures on public land, and embed enforceable affordability provisions from the outset. Legislative reform should also empower public institutions (such as school districts and health authorities) to lease surplus land under standardized equity oriented terms. All land transfers should include long term affordability mechanisms, supported by regulatory tools and financial incentives to ensure viability and system wide deployment.

Barcelona, Spain, La Chalmeta project: Cooperative Housing on Public Land through Long-Term Concessions

Barcelona has advanced a cooperative housing model rooted in public land stewardship to deliver long-term, non-speculative affordable housing (Housing Europe, 2025). A key example is La Chalmeta, located in the Marina del Prat Vermell neighbourhood, which was developed on municipally-donated land under a 75-year concession, meaning the city retains ownership while granting the cooperative long-term usage rights to operate non-market, affordable housing. The project consists of approximately 32 limited-equity cooperative units, where residents make an initial equity contribution of around €40,000 and pay monthly rents of about €650—well below prevailing market rents (Avilla-Royo et al., 2021; Ferreri & Vidal, 2022).

Unlike most co-ops in BC, which typically acquire land outright or rely on private financing, this model combines long-term municipal land concessions with strict affordability covenants, separating land ownership from cooperative management to permanently insulate the housing from market speculation (Gallardo Ruiz, 2024). However, the resulting units may still be too costly to be considered deeply affordable for low-income households, reflecting the ongoing tension between financial viability and accessibility. This model forms part of a broader municipal strategy that enables housing cooperatives to access public land on a long-term leasehold basis, thereby insulating the housing supply from real estate speculation.

The Barcelona experience offers valuable lessons for British Columbia municipalities seeking to leverage public or institutional lands for affordable housing. Adaptation of long-term leasehold or concession frameworks could facilitate the empowerment of housing cooperatives, community land trusts, and Indigenous housing providers. Enabling legislation or municipal bylaws clarifying land tenure, stewardship responsibilities, and affordability covenants would be essential to safeguarding long-term public benefit.

However, it must be acknowledged that long-term concessions in Barcelona can be administratively complex and slow to scale, because they involve multiple layers of municipal and regional approvals, detailed monitoring of affordability covenants, and coordination among diverse stakeholders, which increases transaction costs and extends implementation timelines.

Hamburg, Germany, Alliance for Housing: Land Partnerships, Inclusionary Quotas, and Public Land Stewardship

Hamburg, Germany has implemented a comprehensive municipal framework to ensure affordable housing through the strategic deployment of public land, regulatory tools, and long-term institutional partnerships. At the core of this approach is the city’s “Alliance for Housing,” an agreement between the municipality, housing providers, and private developers that mandates 30% of all new housing built on public land be reserved for low- and moderate-income households (Kerimol, 2022; Vogelpohl & Bucholz, 2017). This requirement is enforced through land sale conditions and planning processes that integrate affordability into market-driven development. Complementing this policy, Hamburg supports alternative land ownership models such as CLTs (Caraballo et al., 2025).

For British Columbia, adopting similar inclusionary mandates within land disposition policies could advance affordability objectives. Moreover, fostering civic landholding entities akin to CLTs could institutionalize permanent affordability and community control. Involvement of public utilities or government agencies such as BC Housing in joint development and stewardship models could further stabilize affordable housing delivery and support equity-focused land governance (Vogelpohl & Bucholz, 2017). However, it must be acknowledged that even in cities such as Hamburg with inclusionary requirements, where acute housing shortages and high rents persist despite quota mechanisms and subsidized housing programs, achieving consistent enforcement and compliance remains challenging in practice because affordability goals compete with market pressures and regulatory complexity (Caraballo et al., 2025).

New Zealand: Kāinga Ora and the Centralization of Land-Based Urban Development

Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities is New Zealand’s national urban development authority, established in 2019 to lead large-scale housing and urban regeneration initiatives on Crown land. Operating primarily in high-growth cities like Auckland and Wellington, Kāinga Ora is empowered by statute to acquire, rezone, service, develop, and dispose of publicly-owned land. Its projects are intended to deliver affordable and mixed-income housing while also addressing broader urban infrastructure and planning needs (Kāinga Ora, 2022; Lee-Morgan et al., 2021). With a legislated focus on affordability, sustainability, and urban wellbeing, Kāinga Ora’s integrated mandate allows it to coordinate infrastructure investment and reduce delays often caused by multi-agency fragmentation. This model illustrates the potential of centralized land authorities to accelerate public land development while aligning housing goals with long-term urban planning, streamlining permitting and approval processes, while aligning housing goals with long-term urban planning (Howden-Chapman et al., 2024).

This case study offers valuable lessons for BC, suggesting the potential benefits of establishing a centralized provincial land development authority. Unlike Kāinga Ora, which operates as a single national agency with statutory powers to acquire, rezone, service, and develop Crown land across the country (Lee-Morgan et al., 2021), a BC counterpart would likely function through restructuring or empowerment of agencies like BC Housing or the Ministry of Housing. This is because provincial agencies in BC do not currently hold equivalent statutory authority to unilaterally manage land across multiple municipalities, and legal, political, and Indigenous consultation requirements necessitate coordination with municipal governments, Indigenous partners, and other departments. As a result, a BC authority would need to coordinate across jurisdictions rather than exercising direct, centralized control.

Such an entity could integrate infrastructure planning, zoning reform, and public land management to accelerate affordable housing delivery, particularly in high-demand urban corridors, while operating within provincial legal and political frameworks (Howden-Chapman et al., 2024; Murphy, 2020; Kāinga Ora, 2022). At the same time, centralized authorities like Auckland’s and New Zealand’s agencies illustrate potential risks (Murphy, 2020), including bureaucratic delays and reduced local flexibility, which stem from the need to coordinate multiple levels of government, standardize processes across diverse municipalities, and comply with centralized reporting and approval procedures (Allen et al., 2025; Murphy, 2020).

These international models demonstrate that public land, when governed strategically, can serve as a foundational tool for delivering enduring affordability and social equity in housing systems.