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Imagine two kids walking home from school. They’re heading to the same building, but they have to take separate entrances.

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One goes up to the costly, market rate condos; the other to affordable housing units, through the “poor door.”

It’s an uncomfortable side effect of some inclusionary zoning policies in American cities — policies that require developers to include a set number of affordable units or build an equal amount elsewhere — and one that hopefully won’t be exported to Ontario.

The province announced Monday a $178-million overhaul of its affordable housing strategy (planned to be voted on before MPPs leave for the summer), including a promise to allow cities to enable inclusionary zoning, which requires developers to build a set amount of affordable housing alongside all full-prices units in all new buildings. The change will simply allow not require cities to make the change. In the United States, most recently in New York City, that has led to some buildings that create separate, essentially unequal, entrances for the lower-income residents. In that city, those separate entrances were dubbed “poor doors.”