New Housing Alternatives

“New Housing Alternatives for a Socially-Just, Post-Covid Urban Canada” is a $2.5 M seven-year Partnership Grant funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), led by Alan Walks and Susannah Bunce (both at University of Toronto). Having received a one-year Partnership Development Grant in 2023, the seven-year grant launched in 2024, looking at ways to decommodify, definancialize, desegregate, and decolonize the Canadian housing system. There are over 60 individual researchers and community partner organizations working on this grant, many of them leaders in the field. We’ll focus on four areas of research:

  1. Housing precarity: evictions, rent increases, landlord practices, homelessness, and encampments
  2. Alternative housing arrangements: community-led housing initiatives, e.g., community land trusts, co-operative housing, co-housing, and eco-villages
  3. Reform and redesign of housing policy, processes, and governance: existing congregate settings, pension funds’ financing of private-sector and public-sector housing development
  4. Rethinking urban land and tenure: land claims, land-back movements, and condo tenure and social housing tenure

I’ll be co-leading (with Ricardo Tranjan, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives) Research Cluster 3 from 2024-2026 on reforming and redesigning housing policies, processes, and governance. RC1 will be co-led by Julie Mah (University of Toronto) and Jeremy Wildeman (Canadian Centre for Housing Rights), RC2 by Susannah Bunce and Nat Pace (Canadian Community Land Trust Network), and RC4 by Heather Dorries (University of Toronto) and Maggie Low (University of British Columbia). We plan to rotate RC leads every two years. Follow our website for the latest updates on the project.

Sub-grant

Courtney Lockhart (Co-operative Housing Federation Canada) and I will be doing some research on “Understanding the Demographics of People Living in Co-Operative Housing in Urban Canada”, starting in 2026.

Podcast

Cherise Burda and I co-host a podcast interviewing community partners and scholars on the grant, and other housing experts. We are getting a great response to the podcast so far, with high listenership as I reported in a blog post on February 23, 2026. Check out the trailer here and find the New Housing Alternatives podcast wherever you listen to podcasts!

Episode 1: Defining affordable housing. Guests: Ray Sullivan (Canadian Housing Renewal Association), Dr. Alex Flynn (UBC). Oct. 17, 2025.

Episode 2: Nonprofit housing solutions. Guest: Jill Atkey (BC Non-Profit Housing Association). Nov. 21, 2025.

Episode 3: Preserving low-rent housing. Guest: Steve Pomeroy (Focus Consulting). Dec. 19, 2025.

Episode 4: The tenant class. Guest: Ricardo Tranjan (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Jan 16, 2026.

Episode 5: Racialized evicitions and AI in the rental housing system. Guest: Dr. Nemoy Lewis (Toronto Metropolitan University). Feb 22, 2026.

Episode 6: Guest: Tim Ross (Co-operative Housing Federation). Mar 20, 2026.