The Scholar-in-Residence program offers a great opportunity for students in related disciplines to chat informally, learn from, and become inspired by academic planners. Our first such opportunity came in 2009 with Dr. Tom Campanella from University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). His path through landscape architecture to planning, and his interest in urban history and redevelopment, made him a very engaging and personable speaker. His interests in publishing for both academic and general audiences were also inspiring: his latest book, The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), tackled the rampant redevelopment taking place in China’s major cities. Our 2010 Scholar-in-Residence was Dr. Emily Talen of Arizona State University, who has written extensively on urban design, New Urbanism and socially mixed neighbourhoods.

Today, SCARP is hosting a “teach-in” of Fainstein’s latest book, The Just City (2010, Cornell University Press). Faculty members Penny Gurstein, Leonie Sandercock and Tom Hutton, along with PhD candidates Silvia Vilches and Victoria Barr, will discuss and critique The Just City in preparation for her visit. Three of us (Victoria, myself, and fellow PhD Candidate Jennie Moore) have also organized a roundtable discussion on justice and equity in planning (“Theorizing Growth in the Just Metropolis”) during the upcoming symposium where we will discuss the questions:

1. How can planners adrress issues of justice/ethics in their day-to-day work?
2. Is “justice” simply about equity or should it include notions of the “good,” democracy, sustainability?
3. What is the scale of the Just City? (Is it only within urban boundaries or in articulation to hinterlands and other cities as well?)

Susan Fainstein and John Friedmann will be joining us for this workshop. Here’s to an intellectually stimulating few weeks!

Bill Rankin's map of Chicago

A couple of years ago, when I attended the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning annual conference in Chicago, I was stunned to hear that Cleveland and Chicago are the most segregated cities in the US. As I’ve written before, Canadian cities simply don’t have these levels of segregation; obviously not for African American and Hispanic populations, but also not for other groups. Recently, I’ve come across a series of maps illustrating the difference between American cities that are more segregated vs. more integrated, thanks to some enlightened cartographers. It is very interesting to compare these maps to the (albeit simpler) maps of visible minorities in Canadian cities recently published by the Globe and Mail.

Bill Rankin‘s map of Chicago illustrates the sharp divides between white, black, Asian, Hispanic, and other ethnocultural groups. It was originally published in Perspecta, the journal of the Yale School of Architecture; Rankin is a PhD candidate in architecture and the history of science.

After seeing this, Eric Fischer produced similar maps for the 40 largest American cities. He used the same process as Rankin (one dot for every 25 people and same colour code, using the 2000 Census data).

We can see some segregation in New York City, but there are zones of integration.

Eric Fischer's map of New York City

Detroit’s 8-Mile district stands out as an example of entrenched segregation. Many of the maps of smaller cities, like Buffalo, Toledo, and Raleigh, highlight inner city concentrations of African Americans.

Eric Fischer’s map of Detroit

Eric Fischer's map of Los Angeles

On the other hand, check out Riverside, CA, which looks very integrated. Los Angeles also has a lot of integration, and San Antonio is very integrated.

Eric Fischer's map of Riverside

A couple of weeks ago, the Globe and Mail posted a series of “heat maps” showing the concentration of visible minorities in Canadian cities. They don’t break down the statistics (from the 2006 Census) into specific ethnocultural groups, as is the usual Canadian trend; there are simply too many groups to map. But they are interesting nonetheless. The maps are interactive, allowing you to zoom in, so I can’t reproduce them here. Check them out at www.globeandmail.ca under Multiculturalism.

Vancouver’s map shows that in most census tracts in Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond and Surrey, over 30% of the population are visible minorities. Toronto has a similar pattern: over 30% of the population in Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Richmond, and Ajax are visible minorities. The central Toronto map shows some interesting areas of lower concentration: areas around the subway lines, west Toronto and the Beaches. In Calgary, Winnipeg and Ottawa, the census tracts with over 30% visible minorities are mainly in the suburbs.

Montréal is even more fascinating because it shows a very different pattern. The visible minority population there is almost exclusively concentrated on the island of Montréal, with lower rates of concentration in the suburbs: the older pattern of immigrant settlement that we still see in smaller cities. This is likely due to sheer numbers: Toronto and Vancouver receive tens of thousands more immigrants each year than Montréal.

Obviously, the American maps show that not all cities south of the border are sharply segregated, but even in the smaller cities, like Toledo, Ohio, there are lingering segregated African American populations. This in itself is not an issue; the maps of Canadian cities show lots of neighbourhoods with high concentrations of visible minorities. The real issue is when these concentrations are due to poverty or discrimination (either societal or institutional, such as in the housing market). American housing research seems to indicate that much of the segregation is in fact due to these two factors. Entire programs are devoted to fixing this problem: Housing Choice Vouchers, for example, aim to remove people from entrenched areas of poverty into neighbourhoods where they may have better educational and job opportunities.

I think these maps illustrate again how different Canadian and American cities are in terms of ethnocultural groups: both in terms of their composition and their spatial dispersal. This continues to create policy differences between the US and Canada, not only in my own research areas of housing, transportation, and immigration, but in many other areas affecting municipalities: welfare provision, health care, and education to name a few.

Florida’s map shows the same differentiation that David Hulchanski did three years ago in his excellent report Toronto divided: A tale of three cities. This report received a lot of media attention, in part because its complexity and rigor left little doubt in its findings: Hulchanski, Associate Director (Research) of CUCS, carefully mapped many different characteristics using Census data spanning a thirty-year period, including income, housing tenure, transit use, ethnicity, immigration status, household size, and employment. The carefully-worded report raised some red flags: the decline of the middle class, the decrease in housing choices for low-income households, the shift of poor neighbourhoods from the inner city to the outer suburbs.

It’s common to say that people “choose” their neighbourhoods, but it’s money that buys choice. Many people in Toronto have little money and thus few choices…When most of the city is in a middle-income range, city residents can generally afford what the market has to offer…It is only when the percentage of those in the middle declined that we began to hear about “housing affordability” problems. If the incomes of a significant share of people in a city fall relative to the middle, the gap between rich and poor widens. Those closer to the bottom are more numerous and find it increasingly difficult to afford the largest single item in their budget–housing (either in mortgage payments or rent).   J. David Hulchanski, Associate Director (Research), CUCS

Hulchanski, who has written volumes about affordable housing policy in Canada, wrote persuasively of the policy options that can help reverse these trends, and many writers echoed his concerns. Florida himself wrote an article in response in the Globe and Mail.

Florida, on the less thorough end of the spectrum, mapped “creative class”, “service class”, and “working class” occupations in the Toronto CMA. The Geography of Toronto’s Service Class, published by the Martin Prosperity Institute at U of T, shows how the “classes” were defined. Artists, doctors, teachers, managers, architects and computer programmers were all considered “creative class”. Cashiers, salespeople, police officers, food preparers, medical assistants, and administrative assistants were “service class”. And miners, welders, carpenters, truck drivers, production workers, and construction workers were in the “working class.” If you know Florida’s work, you know that he is preoccupied with class and that he tends to use loaded terms; “class” is not a casually-used word in the Canadian research arena.

The kind of work people do is the hallmark of social-economic class and the map shows a city where the dominant classes occupy, literally, two different social, economic, and geographic spaces.  Richard Florida, www.creativeclass.com

Map from www.creativeclass.com

It is true that Toronto’s postindustrial shift has led to a decrease in manufacturing jobs, suburbanization of workplaces, concentration of high-paying service-sector work in the inner city, and gentrification around subway lines (all of which Hulchanski pointed out earlier, not to mention Tom Hutton and David Ley). But Florida’s definitions are directly responsible for his findings: how is a doctor in the “creative class”? A manager or computer programmer? And how do police offers and medical assistants get grouped in with cashiers and administrative assistants? It seems as though he has just mapped by salary level, not occupational category…in which case his results aren’t surprising.

Research involving income, occupation, ethnicity, and polarization need to be carefully articulated and worded to avoid clichés like “upper class people live in desirable areas while lower class people do not.” There is much more depth to the story than Florida lets on, although he is fairly well-versed in housing issues. The recently-released report on Canada’s Housing Bubble, produced by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, outlines how housing prices have risen faster than inflation, household incomes, and economic growth. Echoing Edward Jones’ report earlier this year (see my previous post), CCPA says that the housing market is “more unstable than it has been in over a generation.” All major cities in Canada are now experiencing housing price increases above their historical range, meaning the time is ripe for a crash. For Florida, who advocates the creative class and advises cities on how to bring these types to their cities, real estate is crucial: he has written about the need for more rental housing, which in his opinion keeps people mobile and able to search for employment in a wider range of locations. His recent publication on Toronto’s class divide has more to do with the city’s political landscape than housing, of course, and it has served its purpose of being provocative.

In Sheng’s doctoral defense, she contrasted two cultural production sites, one of which developed on its own, as artists found the low-rent buildings vacated by industries that had relocated to the suburbs. The second was designated by the government and targeted for redevelopment. The contrast between the two was very interesting: the first had grown illegally for some time as artists occupied the various buildings on the site, then over a decade gentrified to the point where rents are almost at the upper limit of affordability for small-scale production. The second site was initially designed with high-end stores and upscale landscape architecture targeted to foreign tourists. It is under-used (the rents are too high and there may not be enough demand for the location) and the artwork sold there is unaffordable to the Chinese population.

Dr. Zhong will be starting a post-doctoral position at the National University of Singapore, where she will continue her research on urban redevelopment and the policies that impact growth and change in Chinese cities.

Update: As of February 2012, Sheng will be a lecturer at the brand new Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou, a joint effort of China’s Xi’an Jiaotong University and the UK’s Liverpool University.

It appears that Richard Florida agrees with me. Higher rates of renting, public transit use and residential mobility are all key themes in Florida’s latest book, The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity, released two weeks ago (read a review of the book, and other Florida works and quirks, on Urbanophile). Florida belies the myth that housing is a good investment, particularly when it’s held for 20 or 30 years: the rate of return on housing in the US has generally been quite low, in fact from 1890 to 1990 it was exactly zero. We’ve all seen how difficult it can be to sell a house in recent years in the US, and in earlier recessionary times in Canada: my parents’ current house was bought for $20,000 less than a similar house a few blocks away because the owner had lost her job in the 1990s recession and had to sell quickly. A friend’s parents sold their house in 2007 for almost the same price they paid for it in the early 1980s because the mill in their town had closed, leaving most of the residents out of work.

Overinvestment in housing has decreased investment in other areas like medical technology, software and alternative energy. Florida has written before about the dangers of putting too many eggs in one basket: at the height of the mortgage crisis in the US (in a November 28, 2009 article in the Globe and Mail), he wrote that the mortgage system was directly responsible for the crisis, and that the era of overinvestment in homeownership and car ownership were over. Interestingly, Florida also applies his argument to individuals: Canadians carry more mortgage debt as a percentage of their disposable income than Americans, meaning we have far less to spend on other things. A friend of mine who works in mutual funds and investments tells me the average homeowner pays for their house two and a half times due to interest. This is probably no surprise to those of us living in the country’s biggest cities, where housing prices are astonomical and have not shown any decline in growth since the US mortgage crisis. In fact, housing prices in Canada increased 20% last year.

Florida argues that in cities with higher homeownership, unemployment is also higher because homeowners are less likely to pick up and move when things get tough. He believes that mobility is often the key to employment, and more flexible housing choices are key in times of economic instability. It seems there are other people out there like me, who prefer the flexibility of renting because we want to remain mobile and have no desire to live in one place for twenty years. We aren’t all that uncommon either: 40.1% of the Canadian population moved within the past five years, according to the 2006 Census; 14.1% moved within the last year. Florida correctly predicted that rental housing would play a major role in stabilizing the US economy after the mortgage crisis: families were able to move into foreclosed properties that were renovated and re-marketed as affordable rental housing. This was because the Obama administration wasted no time in investing $4.25 billion on the creation of tens of thousands of federally-subsidized rental units using the federal Making Homes Affordable program.

Vintage 1950s matchbooks featuring real estate ads

In his May 3rd article in the Globe and Mail, Florida goes as far as saying that “home ownership is an impediment to Canada’s long-term prosperity” because high house prices, low interest rates and lax government policies in Canada could spell trouble for the housing market. Even though people have been talking about the “bubble” for over fifteen years, Edward Jones’ recent report predicts Canada’s is about to burst. The federal government recently made it more difficult to get a mortgage and is considering other measures to tighten mortgage availability in order to protect the market from collapse. They eliminated the no down payment mortgage option before the US crisis began, but there is still a 5% down option. What is particularly interesting to me as a non-economist is how the housing market has historically been used to maintain or even increase consumer spending to stave off or recover from economic recession: besides the post-war era, we saw low interest rates brought in after the 1989 stock market crash in Canada and after 9/11 in the US to encourage people to keep buying homes. I guess there’s a fine line between “removing barriers to homeownership” to encourage spending and bringing on an economic meltdown by letting anyone with a a couple of bucks buy a house.

Massive marketing was required to sell the idea of homeownership as a stable, more respectable lifestyle choice. Let’s not forget that those first homes were practically given away at very low prices and low mortgage rates, their construction highly subsidized by federal governments in both the US and Canada. Those cherubic children, war brides and returning vets in 1940s suburban home ads were so convincing that most of us still believe homeowners are somehow better than renters: even Florida hints that switching from homeownership to renting might have “unforseen social costs” for cities and regions. Our own values and biases about homeownership drive the market. Yet a mere 60 years ago, renter households were the majority in both our countries.

The classic French text Un chez-moi à mon coût (2000) (edited by Eric Brassard), which I read at the urging of a fellow renter working at CMHC, carefully dissects all the economic myths of homeownership, arguing that it is often the non-economic factors that are the most influential. The book presents case studies of housing choices of a variety of professionals, both renters and owners, who argue that there is no sound economic argument for homeownership or against renting: it just comes down to personal preference. But we’re so invested in the homeownership ideal that investing in rental housing, or convincing middle-income families to rent, would take a lot of work. The tide may be turning in the US, but with high housing prices and fairly easy access to mortgages, we may not see this shift in Canada until our own mortgage crisis rears its ugly head.

The EPA report Residential Construction Trends in America’s Metropolitan Regions summarizes a study that examined residential permit data over 19 years (1990-2008)  in 50 metropolitan regions. In roughly half of the regions, there has been a dramatic increase in the share of new residential permits built in inner cities and older suburbs.

Among the cities that saw a substantial increase are New York, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Miami, Chicago, Denver, Portland, Seattle, and Fort Worth. But even smaller centres like Birmingham, Milwaukee, and Kansas City saw substantial increases in the share of residential permits in their inner cities. Cities with low increases include St. Louis, Detroit, and Salt Lake City, while Cincinnati, Cleveland, Hartford, Providence, and Buffalo all had slight decreases. Particularly interesting are the graphs which show detailed trends for specific metropolitan regions, contrasting urban fringe, 1st tier suburb, and city permits. In many cases, we can see the beginning the mortgage crisis on these graphs: between 2004 and 2006, urban fringe areas began their decline and cities began their ascent.

A lot of this has to do with housing type: national data confirms that the proportion of single detached housing permits decreased from 71% in 2000 to 59% in 2008. Townhouses remained relatively stable, while condos increased from 4% to 7%, rented condos from 16% to 24% and large multifamily buildings from 11% to 23%. I find these numbers surprising: little by little, the American Dream seems to be crumbling before our eyes. We have to remember that not all of this change can be pinned on the dismal housing market, since the trends persist over 19 years.

The EPA cautions that, while the data reveals a substantial shift in residential patterns, a large percentage of construction still takes place on previously undeveloped land. While the share of residential permits increased in many regions, in some these still account for less than half the overall share at the regional level. They would like to do further research on what is driving the shift: real estate market fundamentals or public sector policies? What type of residential units are being built on previously-developed land, and what percentage of these are transit-accessible? However, they did feel safe in saying that, ”This acceleration of residential construction in urban neighborhoods reflects a fundamental shift in the real estate market,” citing lower crime rates in urban areas and increased demand for homes in walkable neighbourhoods close to jobs.

A map showing the proposed LRTs

I’ve written before about how complex governance is when it comes to public transit in our municipalities. Vancouver’s struggles to build the UBC rapid transit line and many Canadian municipalities’ policies to better link transit and housing are detailed in several other posts. Even when projects are approved, it’s no guarantee they will be built because we have no stable source of funding for public transit and no consistent governance structure that enables the transfer of federal or provincial funds to municipalities. Transit City originally proposed eight lines: Sheppard (14 km), Finch West (17 km), Eglington Crosstown (33km), Scarborough, Don Mills, Jane, Scarborough Malvern, and Waterfront West. The province agreed to fund the first four back in 2007: of these, three are new lines (Sheppard, Finch West, and Eglinton) and the fourth is a retrofit of the existing Scarborough RT with four new stations. The province’s proposal to cut funding in half will put the Eglinton LRT, Scarborough RT, and Finch LRT at risk: the Sheppard line is already under construction while Eglington and Finch were to break ground this year and Scarborough in 2012.

As U of T Social Work professor David Hulchanski illustrated a couple of years ago, increased incomes in the areas around the existing two subway lines make it all but impossible for lower- and middle-income people to live close to rapid transit.

Hulchanski's map showing the need for rapid transit

Hulchanski’s most recent map shows the areas which have decreased in income in the past forty years against the proposed lines: the new LRT lines would be making transit much more accessible to the rapidly-growing areas of the region (read his plea for action on ttcriders.ca). My own work with immigrants in Toronto shows that they are willing to travel long distances on infrequent public transit buses only for a short time; eventually they succumb to buying one, two, and three cars. They live further and further out because that’s where affordable housing is…little realizing their transportation costs will eat away considerably at their savings.

Last week mayor David Miller recorded a public service announcement on the subway PA system telling people to call the Premier’s office and their MPPs to oppose the Transit City cuts. Many of the local mayors are also urging their citizens to do the same. All sorts of organizations, from Toronto Environmental Alliance to the Public Transit Coalition have links to the appropriate politicians, and there is a Save Transit City site. I urge you all to call, email, write the MPPs and Premier McGuinty and if you’re in the Toronto area, pack the Council chambers this Wednesday April 21st.

A great article in The Walrus (Gary Stephen Ross) contrasts “the Vancouver you see and the one you don’t.” Vancouver might have “world-class” restaurants, but it’s impossible to hail a cab after 10pm or have a drink on upper Granville Street after midnight.  Environmentally-conscious thinking is serious out west, and the City of Vancouver often initiates innovative policies and programs. But Ross rightly points out that Vancouver is missing several indicators of “civic heft and maturity”: until the Canada Line’s opening last fall, there was no public transit line to the airport; the main train terminus at Pacific Station does not present the city’s best face; there’s no downtown university campus with an adjoining student neighbourhood, no major civic square or broad pedestrian promenade. Ross recalls a 1960s trip to Vancouver, when the city was little more than a frontier town; compared to the more cosmopolitan Toronto and Montreal, Vancouver was a lightweight.  He points out that this is still the case: with a population of about 600,000, the City of Vancouver’s analogues are more likely to be Charlotte, Memphis, and El Paso than Chicago or New York.

The first full day of competition illustrated some of these complexities. While tourists lined the streets and hung out at Robson Square to see the events unfold, protesters smashed in the windows of Bay’s Georgia Street store, where the entire main floor is devoted to Olympic merchandise. Anti-Olympic sentiment has evidently not faded in Vancouver, where many residents have left the city altogether to get away from an event they didn’t want in the first place. After Expo 86, a world exposition that many people attest “put Vancouver on the map,” international attention focused on Vancouver. Almost immediately after the event, Hong Kong developers bought up acres of prime real estate at the waterfront, and by the 1990s the city was glittering with high-rise condos. Housing prices shot through the roof and the sleepy town’s well-kept secrets of soaring mountains and underused waterfront were now offered up to the highest bidders.

Vancouver grew almost overnight, and the complexities that Ross presents in his article are characteristics of a city still in its youth, one that has not yet come to terms with its “world-class” label. It’s easy to forget that until Expo, Vancouver was a mid-sized city at best. Vancouverites who grew up here attest to this, even those who are too young to remember the 1988 Calgary Olympics. To them Vancouver should still be as it was in the old days of the early 80s: a natural wonderland that was relatively unknown even among Canadians. They resent the crowded hiking trails, the high-rise condos that populate Yaletown, and the implication that others might want to live in their city. Unfortunately, this makes it a city with deep social rifts. The city is home to both the richest and poorest postal code in the country. Labour strikes, whether they involve public transit workers or the City of Vancouver staff, last for months on end because the two sides are so polarized. Pervasive homelessness is a never-ending topic, as it is in Toronto, but it’s complicated by what are often the highest property prices and rental rates in the country. The region’s aboriginal peoples may have been fairly well represented in the Olympics Opening Ceremony, but there are still major tensions between them and the provincial and municipal governments around land claims.

While Ross is indeed correct in implying that many of these characteristics remain unseen and unheard, they go a long way in explaining its citizens’ lukewarm attitudes towards migration, commercial ventures and tourist attractions. So while the many spectators, athletes and media representatives focus on the Olympic events, they can’t help but be intrigued by the complexities of Vancouver and its inhabitants. In time Vancouverites may be happy to host world events and embrace immigration and migration to its shores, but it’s still too young to appreciate growth and change.

Robert Lang, professor of sociology at the University of Nevada (Las Vegas) coined the term “boomburb” to describe these bedroom communities that grew rapidly as their adjacent major cities grew. But he says that the latest post-mortgage crisis trends may indicate that bedroom communities may have to become more village-like, with higher densities and clustered development, if they want to keep growing. In other words, they need to go beyond single-use residential zoning, and offer some of the mixed-use development and services that cities offer.

While the mortgage crisis is definitely the main cause of this shift, latent demand for more mixed-use, transit-oriented development, increasing concerns about climate change, and generational change are also influencing housing location and types. People’s housing preferences seem to be changing, and the mortgage crisis has increased the trend towards smaller homes, more central locations, and shorter commutes. Smaller cities (between 20,000 and 50,000) have trouble retaining college graduates during poor economic times as people move to cities for better access to job opportunities.

There is some evidence of this shift in the Vancouver region: although the outer municipalities like Port Coquitlam and Abbotsford still show growth rates higher than Vancouver, inner municipalities such as Richmond and Burnaby have seen a stabilization in rates. Richmond’s Housing Strategy notes that it has seen residents’ demands shift from larger to smaller homes, while Vancouver has approved laneway housing and secondary suites, both inherently smaller housing types, in the last few years.

Nate Berg reported on Planetizen that in the US, the largest increases in public transit commuting from 2006-2008 have been in the metropolitan statistical areas of Charlotte, NC; Detroit; Riverside, CA; Phoenix, Minneapolis, Sacramento, St. Louis, Denver, San Antonio, and Seattle. High oil prices and targeted public transit improvements are credited for the major increases in these areas. In particular, Charlotte and Minneapolis recently opened brand new commuter rail lines. In many cases, more middle-income people began commuting by transit, likely as they got rid of the second car or stopped driving it as much. It remains to be seen whether higher transit commuting levels in these areas will persist over 2009, as many American transportation authorities have had to slash budgets to cope with the recession. Still, as Berg writes, the increases “suggest the possibility of a more transit-tolerant future.”

There is a lot of variation among regions and municipalities but there seems to be a general trend towards smaller, more centrally located homes and transit access, trends that also appeared during the oil crisis of 1973-74. The late 1970s was the beginning of urban gentrification of inner city and inner-suburban neighbourhoods in many Canadian cities, as households decreased their car dependence and opted for smaller homes and properties. Suburban living ain’t cheap, especially during tough economic times. If the American trends persist, they could lead to a regrowth in small to mid-sized towns near major cities, much as one finds in England. These towns, while they have a variety of shops and services, housing types and clustered development along a main street, still retain a small-town feeling which we really haven’t managed to do well in North America. Small towns tend to stagnate as they avoid anything that might seem too urban, while cities have grown rapidly, struggling with soaring housing and service provision costs. There is a real need for this kind of in-between small to mid-sized town with a bit more of an urban feeling and zoning flexibility to achieve a more compact urban form and some economic stability.

The Secure, Adequate, Accessible and Affordable Housing Act (Bill C-304), was proposed by Vancouver NDP MP Libby Davies in February of this year. It has been a long time coming: similar bills were introduced in 2008 and 2006, but the instability of minority governments prevented them from gaining any serious ground. Parliament voted to move ahead with Bill C-304 on September 30, 2009 (this second reading passed with a vote of 147 to 138) and now it must go through a House Standing Committee Meeting before being brought back to the House of Commons for a 3rd reading. Some significant passages from the bill:

• “Whereas the provision of and access to adequate housing is a fundamental human right according to paragraph 25(1) of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights…”
• “Whereas Canada’s wealth and national budget are more than adequate to ensure that every woman, child and man residing in Canada has secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing as part of a standard of living that will provide healthy physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual and social development and a good quality of life…”
• “Whereas improved housing conditions are best achieved through co-operative partnerships of government and civil society and the meaningful involvement of local communities…”
• “3.(1) The Minister shall, in consultation with the provincial ministers of the Crown responsible for municipal affairs and housing and with representatives of municipalities and Aboriginal communities, establish a national housing strategy designed to ensure that the cost of housing in Canada does not compromise an individual’s ability to meet other basic needs, including food, clothing and access to education.”
• “3.(2) The national housing strategy shall provide financial assistance, including financing and credit without discrimination, for those who are otherwise unable to afford rental housing.”

Under the specific requirements, the Act ensures the construction of housing that “includes not-for-profit rental housing projects, mixed income not-for-profit housing cooperatives, special-needs housing and housing that allows senior citizens to remain in their homes as long as possible”, housing for the homeless, temporary and emergency shelters. They even managed to include standards for sustainable and energy-efficient design. The Act prioritizes housing for those who haven’t had access to stable, secure affordable housing over an extended period; those who have special needs due to family size or status, or mental or physical disabilities; and those who have been denied housing due to discrimination.

The Act requires the federal housing Minister to work with the provincial ministers of housing and municipal representatives, and (s)he is required to convene a meeting of these within 180 days after the passage of the Act to develop standards and objectives for the strategy, set targets for the commencement of programs, and develop principles of agreement for implementation of the programs. The Minister “may take any measures that the Minister considers appropriate to implement the national housing strategy as quickly as possible.” The Minister is required to present a report of this meeting “before each House of Parliament on any one of the first five days that the House is sitting following the expiration of 180 days after the end of the conference.”

Like many Canadians, I’ve been following Bill C-304 rabidly. Legisinfo provides the latest updates so stay tuned: the House Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities met on Nov. 5th and will meet again on Nov. 17th. They need to report on their debates to the House of Commons before the 3rd reading of the bill. To quote Chris Brown, the NDP MP for Hamilton Mountain, “It is about rights. It is about dignity. It is about investments. It is about jobs. It is about time.”