Building social connections in practice: Multi-unit housing policy and evaluation guide

A practical resource for planners to evaluate and implement housing policy that strengthens social connection and wellbeing for residents.

Connection, belonging, and health in mulit-unit housing

In 2024, Happy Cities and Hey Neighbour Collective published the Building Social Connections toolkit, a set of practical, evidence-based strategies for designing housing that supports social connection, health, and belonging.

In 2026, we worked with the cities of Burnaby and New Westminster to apply the learnings from the toolkit, using it as a design framework to review the social wellbeing performance of each city’s policies, development applications, and built housing developments. The goals were to:

• Develop a replicable methodology that local governments can use to assess and strengthen policy for social wellbeing

• Assess how policy intent is being applied in practice by developers, architects, and housing providers, including which policies have been most successful, and where development applications are falling short

• Help local governments understand pathways to increase social wellbeing in multi-unit housing, including clear policy and design recommendations to improve uptake

How to evaluate municipal policy for social wellbeing

Happy Cities led the following steps, with strategic support from Hey Neighbour Collective:

Step 1: Policy analysis: We assessed how each city addresses social wellbeing across its policy documents, developing a policy evaluation framework to identify strengths and gaps. This step identifies policy intent, helping planners understand how their organization’s policies support social wellbeing, and ensuring that new work builds on what already exists.

Step 2: Evaluation: We drew on findings from the policy analysis and the Building Social Connections toolkit to assess how buildings and development applications are incorporating design for social wellbeing in practice. This evaluation step identifies the gap between policy intent and real-world uptake, helping planners understand how residents experience social wellbeing outcomes, and how policy influences development and design decisions. Evaluation methods included:

• Reviews of in-stream development applications in Burnaby and New Westminster, including:

  • Social design audits of drawings

  • Interviews with development and design teams

• Post-occupancy evaluations of 3 residential buildings in Burnaby, including:

  • Resident surveys and focus groups

  • On-site building audits

  • Interviews with development and design teams

Step 3: Recommendations: We worked with city staff to identify how their policies can be strengthened to support wellbeing outcomes, including in official community plans, development permit areas, and design guidelines.

Step 4: Knowledge mobilization: We are synthesizing the learnings from this project to create a guide that will help other municipalities apply similar methods—without starting from scratch.

Coming soon: Bring this approach to your community! 

We’re excited to share a guide with key learnings from this process, including the steps to conduct your own policy audit, development reviews, and post-occupancy evaluation of residential buildings.

Sign up here to receive the guide when it is released, or get in touch to learn more.

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Funding acknowledgment

This work was supported by a PlanH grant from BC Healthy Communities, the Max Bell Foundation, and contributions from the cities of Burnaby and New Westminster.