Earlier this month in the third of their highly engaging series Housing That Connects Us, the Vancouver based Hey NeighbourCollectivecontinued the dialogue focused on the aspect of affordability, a term which, when applied to the housing challenge, carries some loosely gathered interpretations. This at a time when housing interconnects with impacts of climate change, social conflict and of course the ongoing global inflation and economic stress.
Considering these impacts and others, the narrative on the housing crisis does play out differently in every region around the world, urban and rural: where some have more (or less) economic resources and workable infrastructure supports, stronger (or not) actionable government programs and policies and for that matter some people with keen vision to consider all the options for housing concepts – who see houses as homes.
After attending the three Housing That Connects Us webinars, my sense is that we are fortunate in Canada to have most of what we need at our disposal to lead the way through this housing struggle and the Vancouver example of a collective approach offers much to learn from. Michelle Hoar, moderator of this series, as usual leads a holistic conversation while at the same time provides an appreciation of the finer points that go into how housing strategies can actually work.
That in mind, this webinar opened with positive outlooks from Madeleine Hebert, Senior Housing Specialist atHappy Cities, a collaborator withHey Neighbourhood Collective. Listening to Hebert once again submit the overriding notion of “homes as catalysts for social connection” her phrase was supported using the Vancouver cohousing concept of Driftwood Village. For more, check out the Happy Cities blog post – How cohousing builds support across generations.
Yet, what of this affordability puzzle? Hebert drew a line from affordability (and all its mixed definitions, as she later put it), to the issue of secure tenure – the right to protect people from being forced out of their home, owned or rented. After that I must admit I was lost in the weeds a little in the second talk by Robert Brown, founder of Chesterman Propertieswho described in detail “financial levers affecting the development of affordable purpose-built rental housing.”
All this interesting background information was a stretch for me, but considering that the majority of the over 200 participants on the webinar were urban planners, housing developers and housing associations I can see that the insights would be of great benefit. But with all the public announcements of “we need more houses, hundred’s, thousand’s, a million – whatever” I rarely hear what the design plan options will be. It’s almost like the metric is an anonymous pile of bricks.
So as someone not in one of these professional groups, I asked a general question in the Q&A box: “how can we best communicate a simple definition of what goes into developing “affordability” in housing that can dispel some of the multiple sometimes negative interpretations? How do we untangle the story of the “puzzle” for everyday people to understand?” Turns out as Michelle Hoar suggested – “that is a juicy question”. Perhaps that‘s best served up on another day.
An item of interest that Hoar mentioned concluded the webinar and did help untangle one important piece of the affordability puzzle and that was the need for cities to adopt “inclusionary zoning models” which by simple definition means that cities or towns of significant size in their planning, should allow that a appropriate percentage of homes in a new housing development be affordable or financially attainable for people with low to moderate incomes.
In closing for now it must be said that what Hey Neighbour Collective does so well is provide a recap of each Housing That Connects Us webinar. So in case you missed it click Untangling the affordability puzzle. Once again I look forward to the next webinar.
