Leveraging ArcGIS for Success in Canada's Housing Accelerator Fund

Learn how ArcGIS products can increase the value of spatial technology in composing and showcasing housing solutions for your organization.

About the Housing Accelerator Fund

In Canada, the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) supports and provides incentives to municipalities to increase the supply of housing. While the HAF initially targeted a supply of 100,000 new homes by 2024-25, it is now set to target 112,000 new homes by 2028. Administered by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the HAF has now allocated $4.44 billion in funding from 2023-24 to 2027-28.

Some of the initiatives that participating jurisdictions are seeking to complete include:

• Implementing incentives, costing or fee structures to encourage such things as affordable housing,

• Allowing increased housing density on a single lot including promoting ‘missing middle’ housing forms,

• Promoting infill developments with increased housing density and a variety of unit types; and

• Enabling mixed-use redevelopment of city-owned properties, while where appropriate maintaining the current government use.

(Source: Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer | July 10, 2025)

Why Location Matters

When examining where and what these new housing developments may look like, spatial analysis tools can help us identify optimal areas for densification, rezoning, and infrastructure investment. Planners might have to evaluate existing or proposed zoning, access to roads and transit networks, land availability, and environmental constraints, in determining the optimal sites to develop.

Going outside of a municipality’s planning department to present these results to both executive-level decision makers and the public requires the use of engaging tools that are tailored to focus on location, explain progress on initiatives, and obtain feedback from audiences. Being able to visualize and interact with proposed development on selected sites leads to a better overall spatial understanding.

ArcGIS Capabilities That Align with HAF Goals

ArcGIS Urban: Scenario planning for zoning changes, density increases, and site suitability
ArcGIS Urban is a product designed for planners with the ability to simulate multiple scenarios that could show differences in zoning, built-form density, and housing unit types, among other variables. Metrics can be calculated across scenarios to allow for a comparison between the numeric values associated with measures like population, parking, energy use, and the cost of constructing affordable housing units, to name but a few.

If planners need to increase housing within an area to achieve targets but need to find the most suitable land parcels for development, ArcGIS Urban has site suitability analysis tools that make use of weighted criteria in determining optimal parcels. Suitability models can be composed with source data coming from parcels, zoning, or any external feature layer you may wish to include.

Using ArcGIS Urban for site suitability analysis

ArcGIS Pro: Data integration, analysis, and visualization
Esri’s flagship desktop product, ArcGIS Pro, can bring in-depth mapping and analysis tasks into your organization’s planning workflows. Advanced editing tools for feature geometry and attributes combined with geoprocessing capabilities can act as vital pieces in building your housing vision. Some relevant tasks may include:

• Creating and maintaining your land parcel fabric for use within ArcGIS Urban,

• Managing associated feature layers, like development applications, to provide context; and

• Digitizing proposed site plans to create features can give you building footprints that can be transformed into 3D building models.

Using ArcGIS Pro to construct 3D buildings

ArcGIS Dashboards: Real-time monitoring of housing targets and progress
The concept of monitoring progress on digital dashboards over the web has been widely accepted across many industries. ArcGIS Dashboards allows you to take your housing targets output derived from work done in ArcGIS Urban or ArcGIS Pro and present them in a concise, specific web interface designed to highlight and track progress. Executive and public audiences who do not normally interact with GIS deliverables regularly can quickly and easily obtain an understanding of your organization’s housing goals and any progress made towards fulfilling them.

Using ArcGIS Dashboards to present plan content

ArcGIS StoryMaps: Communicating housing strategies to wide audiences
Explaining the context surrounding your development scenarios and the strategies they stem from can be crucial when presenting your results. ArcGIS StoryMaps empowers users to craft stories with immersive media like photos, videos, and audio, with longform text, plus the integration of 2D and 3D map outputs. Scenarios composed in ArcGIS Urban can be exported as web scenes and embedded within StoryMaps applications, allowing users to dynamically explore proposed housing developments and the metrics associated with them.

ArcGIS StoryMaps can offer a more engaging experience for users consuming planning deliverables at both in-person and virtual public consultations, as well as reference material on your organization’s website.

Using ArcGIS StoryMaps to tell the story of your plan

ArcGIS Hub: Community engagement and transparency in housing initiatives
Bringing multiple web applications together as a centralized platform is possible with ArcGIS Hub. Your organization can present a unified website experience with the ability to share open data, enable collaboration, display progress towards housing targets, manage events, post surveys and more. Outputs from ArcGIS Hub also feed directly back into your organization's operational systems.

If your organization wants to dedicate a hub site solely for initiatives for new housing, it can act as a complementary piece to an existing corporate website with the ability to match branding, logos, and styles.

Using ArcGIS Hub as a centralized platform

Bringing It All Together

As municipalities across Canada work to meet ambitious housing targets, ArcGIS tools offer a comprehensive suite of capabilities that support every stage of the planning and development process. This could include anything from identifying suitable land parcels and modeling zoning scenarios to visualizing proposed developments and engaging with the public. By integrating some or all the products listed above into either new or existing workflows, planners can make more informed decisions, communicate more effectively with audiences, and demonstrate measurable progress toward housing goals.

Ultimately, using ArcGIS tools within planning is not just about enhancing technical capacity. It’s also about enabling collaboration, transparency, and innovation in housing development. Whether through scenario planning in ArcGIS Urban, real-time tracking with ArcGIS Dashboards, immersive storytelling with ArcGIS StoryMaps, or composing a platform with ArcGIS Hub, these tools empower municipalities to align their housing strategies with HAF objectives while fostering community trust and engagement. With the right spatial solutions in place, organizations can accelerate their impact and contribute meaningfully to solving Canada’s housing challenges.

You can interact with some of the web applications featured above in the Creating Vision for Future Growth ArcGIS StoryMaps Collection.

To learn more about services offered by Community Planning at Esri Canada, please explore our Planning & Housing industry page and join our Planning & Housing User Group on LinkedIn.