Most North American cities have a system to share off-site infrastructure in the suburbs, but few have a system to do this in infill areas. That’s because the costs to upgrade things like underground pipes are largely unknown, and developers don’t build infills in one area all at once.

By addressing the financial uncertainties and spreading the costs of infrastructure upgrades, Edmonton could serve as a model for other cities looking to promote sustainable urban growth.

Housing Accelerator Fund

The money could come from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF), which was launched in 2023 to tackle the housing crisis by working with municipalities to reduce barriers to new supply, and to increase housing availability.

In February of this year, Edmonton received a commitment of $175 million to fund 11 initiatives and “help keep Edmonton affordable by encouraging development of multi-unit, missing middle, transit-oriented, and affordable housing”.

Overall, the City hopes to incentivize the building of 5,236 of these kinds of units, above baseline projections. The units would need to be completed (or at least have building permits) by the end of 2026, which is a tight timeline (especially considering many infill investment decisions in other cities can take upwards of 5 years!) but overall this is a big step in advancing our infill goals.

Actions included some things that we were already relatively ahead on, like redoing the Zoning Bylaw, promoting secondary suites, and reduction of the multi-unit tax subclass. There were also several actions around affordable housing, including using surplus school sites for mixed-market housing.

An infill infrastructure fund would be unique in that it is not already underway, it aligns with the overall goals of the HAF, and would motivate building both market and non-market housing, thereby influencing the most units.

Infill Infrastructure Helps Current and Future Residents

Offsite infrastructure supported by a fund like this would also support future residential supply. Builders of new infill projects in the areas prioritized by a fund would be able to advance stalled projects, where upgrades to things like a watermain or new traffic-lights for the neighborhood would have been cost-prohibitive. And neighborhoods would benefit from these improvements sooner, without having to wait for a second or third development to fully pay for something like a sidewalk or alley upgrade.

For a city that has seen tremendous growth in the past few years, this would represent an opportunity to take advantage of in-migration, without adding costs to send busses or extend other services in the City’s growing suburbs

To take the best advantage of this program, investors would need to be able to quickly get information on overall servicing costs on infill sites.

Overall, figuring out how we finance infill infrastructure will be a huge first step in putting infill development on a level playing field when it comes to site selection, financing, and servicing.