I’m live blogging today from the annual meeting of the New Housing Alternatives research partnership. We are a group of community partners and researchers looking at new ways of building, retaining, and supporting housing in Canadian communities. You can read more about us here.
Today we had a walking tour with Chiyi Tam, who is the force of nature behind the Chinatown Community Land Trust. She talked about the long history of tongs (mutual aid societies) in Chinatown as providing services and refuge for Chinese residents, some housing, and altar space. They had their own microlending policies, offered rooms for rent, and did all kinds of work to maintain their communities. Some have existed since the first Chinatown, which was demolished to make way for Nathan Phillips Square and the Eaton Centre complex, and moved over to the area east and west of Dundas after that. Many are struggling with succession issues as young people have less connection to tongs, but Chiyi shared a recent success story where one of the organizations has gotten a new wave of interest and new board members who are young and motivated to continue the traditions.
We had project updates from Andy from the Downtown Eastside Community Land Trust on a new garden space they have created and a fishing trip they organized with and for Chinese seniors to try to connect people back to nature. Norm Leech (also from the Downtown Eastside CLT) spoke eloquently about CLTs and connection to each other as ways to heal the community, and how researchers can assist in these efforts. Dominique Russell from Kensington Market CLT will be documenting the history of the organization and its process of growing with acquisition of buildings as well as a new modular housing project–she spoke of the story being quite messy and complex, and the importance of telling it in multiple voices. Ricardo Tranjan (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives) is working on a new book, including housing financialization. Erika Sagert gave an update on a project she is working on with Alex Flynn, Penny Gurstein and the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre on supportive housing–they have just completed Phase 1 which is a report on the current state of supportive housing in Canada. They’ll be doing interviews next and then thinking about how to communicate their findings back to community members and housing organizations. Heather Dorries talked about how community land trusts could serve the interests of rematriation, land stewardship and the Land Back movement–they held a one-day workshop on this potential.
Alan Walks gave us an overview of the state-led housing financialization process that has enabled banks and the federal government (e.g. Canada Mortgage Bonds, IMPPs) which has increased speculation by pension funds and other major investors. He discussed whether these programs need to be ended or narrowed to multi-unit/rental buildings, whether we could have wealth taxes on ownership or other ways in which we can put an end to these products and programs. Ricardo Tranjan discussed the increasing percentage of unionized worker wages going towards rent. Sophie O’Manique discussed how Canadian pension landlords are driving housing financialization. Canada’s Big 8 public sector defined benefit pension plans hold over $1 trillion in assets which exceeds the GDP of most countries in the world (including Canada). Four of them have real estate subsidiaries. The Canada Pension Plan and other funds have benefited from looser regulations in the 1990s.
