CRD Watch Homepage

Inclusionary Zoning is a Swindle by an Industry Complex


By David Todtman
Parksville BC
May 14, 2026


Inclusionary Zoning

“Inclusionary zoning” is a housing policy that employs business-friendly subsidies to encourage or require private real-estate developers to include some below-market or affordable units within their shiny new residential developments. The policy is marketed as a path to meeting society’s housing needs through direct public supports of corporate developers.

As the mounting housing crisis demonstrates, inclusionary zoning may ease the burden on a few people but falls far short of meeting society’s broader need for decent housing for all. In fact, inclusionary zoning was introduced by land speculators and their political servants as a public relations coverup of the housing crisis, allowing the industry to carry on with the most profitable housing, luxury units. But the politicians and their corporate sponsors dare not say this out loud because it would expose the naked grift by players in the real estate development game.

Instead of telling the truth, they put forward a wall of propaganda that ignores the fact that business-friendly subsidies are designed to ensure that the public bankrolls private corporate profits while only providing a tiny fraction of the housing we need for healthy communities.

The Players

And who are the players in the lucrative game, prey tell?

We immediately think of the developers, especially because they are front and centre in the game. However, they are only one cog in a much larger political influence machine. That machine also includes realtors, big banks, mortgage brokers, hedge fund and Wall Street finance, building supply outfits, engineering firms, lawyers, builders and subcontractors, and newspapers and related corporate media. We can see the results of the political control they have the political class at all levels of government by policies like the inclusionary zoning grift.

Newspapers and other corporate media are worth considering for a moment. They receive huge revenues from real estate advertising, banks and mortgage brokers, building supply outfits, to name the largest profit sources for media corporations. Newspaper owners, including billionaires like Victoria’s David Black who runs a monopoly string of local papers in Canada and the US, have every incentive to use their editorial and news sections as PR instruments for the real estate/development industrial sector. And, they do this in spades by ignoring the roots of the housing crisis while happily promoting the latest policies their industry and political allies toss out as the next cure for the housing crisis.

It’s the System

The whole thing is a swindle by a cadre of swindlers, and a cancer growing on our society that can never change the course so long as the capitalist market system and their political poodles lord over the provision of housing in our society. We cannot expect this self-serving industry and its compliant political class, to produce any other outcome than the hustle that produces the growing tide of homelessness, unaffordable housing, and water shortages that plague our towns and cities. We need a new system.

—————————————————————————————————

See also:

The Development Industry promoted “Inclusionary Zoning” with “Missing Middle” housing. Once they got it from the politicians, the developments are being sold as “Exclusive” “Luxury” residences. – CRD Watch Homepage

Index of articles regarding questionable media coverage of local government and public participation. – CRD Watch Homepage