Housing is on the Line: How public transit can tackle Canada’s housing crisis is a comprehensive report completed for the Canadian Urban Transit Association that takes a deep dive on the intersection of housing policy and public transit. This report was released at the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa in October 2023.

This report delivers 17 recommendations across five policy pillars to all levels of government, as well as transit agencies, on how to better integrate public transit and housing supply.

To test and refine the recommendations, the project team hosted seven in-person engagements across the country in Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal (and several more online with representatives in Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia) in order to collect perspectives from government, the development industry and interested stakeholders. 

An advisory committee of representatives from municipal planning departments, transit agencies, development community and academia were also formed to gather feedback and insights on the policy recommendations throughout the project.

The policy recommendations were also reviewed with staff from both Infrastructure Canada and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

The recommendations include:

• Activate land by making it easier for municipalities to acquire land around transit stations, addressing speculation near transit stations, and prioritizing intensification in existing transit-accessible areas;

• Evolving the mandate of transit authorities to proactively encourage the development of housing on transit property, including at park-and-ride lots and directly on top of transit stations through overbuild, taking on a stronger role in promoting the integration of transit and housing within their respective municipalities and leveraging data to advance investments in areas with housing and transit affordability considerations;

• Ensuring inclusivity by incentivizing developers to prioritize purpose-built rentals and non-market housing in transit-accessible areas, as well as addressing transit-oriented displacement;

• Streamlining approval processes to get Transit-Oriented Developments (TOD) built faster, including through prioritizing TOD applications, proactive rezoning, and reforming appeal mechanisms; and

• Maximizing investments by encouraging regional collaboration, using performance-based allocation, exploring location-efficient mortgages, and addressing concerns about transit operating costs related to transit expansion.

The role of each level of government for all 17 recommendations was also documented. Advocacy work to action the 17 recommendations to better improve the integration of housing and public transit is underway.