The notion of public housing is changing in today?s social and economic context.
With spiraling rents and property values, many cities, including Toronto, find themselves in housing emergencies for which public sector subsidies are needed to house not only the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, but also young professionals, essential workers, and new immigrants?all of whom are integral parts of a healthy economy. Public housing is now an essential infrastructure required to sustain the continued growth of Canadian cities.
The public housing shortage is a multi-faceted problem with no silver bullet solution. It cannot be simplified as a supply and demand issue: the decline of many large post-war housing projects in Canada has shown that increasing the quantity of housing without carefully considering its impact on local communities and urban contexts is not a sustainable solution. Nor can we simply hope that the issue will be solved by regulating the market and curbing speculation: Canada?s population is growing at a record-setting pace of 2.7 per cent, compared to 0.38 per cent in the US and 0.17 per cent in Europe. As a winner of the Canada Council for the Arts? Prix de Rome for Emerging Practitioners, I recently undertook research to study how European countries including the UK, the Netherlands, and Spain are taking a leadership role in exploring sustainable development models for public housing projects. Recognizing the stigma associated with public housing and t...