Municipal governments in the United States are using various regulatory initiatives associated with their development approval powers to encourage, enable, or require for-profit developers and builders to provide affordable housing. The most common of these regulatory initiatives falls into three categories: inclusionary zoning, exaction programs, including linkage fees, among others, and density bonusing. These initiatives are used both on other own and sometimes in combination with each other, in a wide variety of ways. Increasingly, these initiatives have been used by American municipalities ever since the deep cuts in federal funding that started in the early 1980s in that country. To date, regulatory initiatives have been used only to a limited extent by Canadian municipalities; however, with the recent withdrawal of federal funding for new social housing projects,municipalities, too, are facing similar pressures to consider locally based ways of supporting affordable housing. (excerpt from the document)