Zurich: New ordinance for affordable housing
The Government Council has referred the "Ordinance on Affordable Housing" to the Cantonal Council. The ordinance supplements the Planning and Building Act. It is intended to enable municipalities to build more affordable housing.
For the city of Zurich, the Ordinance on Affordable Housing (PWV) and the new paragraph 49b of the Cantonal Planning and Building Act (PBG) are a further piece in the jigsaw to achieve the one-third target for non-profit housing set out in the municipal bylaws, it says.
According to this, in future the specification of minimum proportions of affordable housing will be permitted in the case of development or zoning. The city can base its planning definition of the areas where the new provision could be applied on the municipal structure plan, which will be made public this year.
However, the actual implementation of the new but very complicated instrument is likely to prove difficult, according to the City of Zurich: On the one hand, additional affordable housing should actually be created, on the other hand, the incentive to do so must be sufficiently great. The city therefore considers further promotion of non-profit housing to be crucial for the desired mix, it adds.
