Housing Toolkit Introduction and Summary

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Islands Trust Housing Options Toolkit 
Toolkit Purpose 
This toolkit has been created through an initiative of the Regional Planning Committee to support land 
use planning projects addressing the need for housing options.  It is intended to provide trustees, 
planning staff, and community groups with structured resources for implementation of housing-related 
projects, both those undertaken by LTCs and those that come before LTCs as development applications. 
While addressing housing shortages involves many agencies and types of initiatives, this toolkit is 
focused on projects directly related to local trust committees ability to regulate land use under Sections 
29 and 31 of the Islands Trust Act. 
This toolkit is meant to be brief, technical and practical, consolidating a variety of documents applicable 
to any housing project. If staff and trustees use this toolkit as a reference during the design and 
implementation of housing projects, their projects should advance rapidly and along a predictable 
trajectory. As with any project within a Local Trust Area, housing projects should be undertaken with a 
clear view to any other land use planning work underway, to maximize efficiency and consistency.  
This toolkit is focused on LTC-initiated projects to amend bylaws, and includes three types of tools: 
Process tools; Template tools; and Background tools.  
The toolkit is not a finished product, but rather a living document to which new resources can be added 
as gaps are identified and solutions developed.  
Toolkit Background 
To prepare this toolkit staff reviewed three decades of housing reports produced by, or tangential to, the 
Islands Trust. The results of the document review are included in this toolkit as Tool 7 in the form of an 
annotated bibliography. Documents referenced in the bibliography are available for review by staff, 
trustees, and community members on the Islands Trust Housing Affordability Program webpage under 
Housing Reports and Resources.  
Toolkit Update and Maintenance 
Ensuring that the toolkit remains up to date is the responsibility of the Director of Planning Services or 
their designate.  New reports to be added to the Housing Resources and Reports inventory should be 
submitted to the Director of Planning Services and uploaded to the Housing Affordability webpage. The 
corresponding bibliography should be updated accordingly with any new inventory entries and relinked 
to the website.  

 
Islands Trust Housing Options Toolkit, 2025   2 
 
 
Relationship to Other Planning Documents  
As LTCs embark on housing options projects guided by this toolkit, staff should consider how those 
projects present opportunities to advance the goals, objectives and/or actions of other high-level Islands 
Trust planning documents such as the Islands Trust Freshwater Sustainability Strategy.  
                                                                                                                                   

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