A social commons framework asserting that housing is a social right is critical to understanding the policies central to addressing the crisis in affordable housing. In short, we need a profound shift in thinking and policy direction focused on the retention of existing affordable housing and the creation of new affordable housing supply.
Listening to a CBC Radio Noon call-in show in January, I was dumbfounded by efforts to advance speeding up development approvals as a primary solution to the affordable housing crisis. I felt like I was listening to the “solving the housing crisis” version of the recent climate change satire “Don’t Look Up”.
It is true that more timely approvals could perhaps explain two or three per cent of the problem. Allowing modest increases in density in areas limited to single family zoning might also generate another five or ten per cent.
But the central challenges are very different and result from three things:
- the almost complete withdrawal of federal and provincial governments from funding social housing since 1993
- that market dynamics and motivations of actors in the private housing market are not well aligned with the bold action needed to address the housing affordability challenges we face, and
- we have incentivized market behaviours that reduce the supply of affordable housing rather than maintaining and increasing the supply of affordable units
The solution to this massive challenge isn’t to double down on approaches that aren’t working. Instead, we must return to what we learned from decades of public investment in the creation of affordable housing prior to the 1990s. We must shift our thinking from “housing” as a financialized asset for investors to “housing” as “home” as an essential building block of social cohesion and of community life.
Like adequate income, decent work, health and education, “a place to call home” provides a stable foundation in supporting life transitions, meeting personal goals and engaging in productive work and community service. For more than forty years after 1945, federal housing policy recognized investing in social housing as a core element in the creation of our system of social protections.
A social commons perspective on housing would see efforts to ensure that everyone has access to safe, secure and affordable housing as a shared, collective responsibility. It builds from the recognition that housing is first and foremost, “a home”, a place of kinship, family, child development, caring work, sharing food and cultural traditions, and much more.
Collectively, our homes are part of the network of social relations and community life that supports community building, civil society and the exercise of local democracy. It helps to build and sustain a sense of place, of belonging and the ability to participate as an engaged member of the larger community.
As a result, unstable and insecure housing contributes to breakdowns in social cohesion, human connection, and can worsen physical health, mental health and other stresses, lower education outcomes, and undermine the ability to secure and maintain employment. Ensuring housing affordability also requires conscious efforts to enlarge the Commons through community land trusts and other ways of creating shared community assets for broader community purposes.
For many of these reasons, the United Nations recognizes safe, secure and affordable housing as a basic human right, the assurance of which is a responsibility of all governments around the globe.
There was a clear recognition among both federal and provincial governments that the private market was not equipped to meet the housing needs of most low and modest income renters. Between 1965 and 1993, federal and provincial governments funded more than106,000 units of non-profit rental housing.
We need to completely re-balance the risks and rewards based on a social commons framework. Where to start? Expand the scope of the National Housing Strategy over the next fifteen years as follows:
- Replace REIT subsidies with a plan to acquire and upgrade 300,000 units of private rental housing
- A mixed income social housing program to build 60,000 units/year
- Housing First/Transitional Housing of up to 150,000 units to end homelessness
- Strengthened rental protections to ensure affordability and reduce evictions
Re-design our planning and zoning tools such that intensification plans capture public and community benefits incl. community land trusts and public land transfers. Inclusionary zoning with a focus on shopping districts, main streets and transportation hubs, and as-of-right zoning for up to three units on larger lots. Ensure that other community facilities, service hubs, walkability and access to nature trails and bikeways are part of such plans.
Ensuring housing affordability means finding ways of enlarging the Commons by creating shared community assets including community land trusts and public spaces. Housing, neighbourhood hubs, and local infrastructure can be developed in ways that strengthen social protections and support compact, ecologically sound planning practices that build a green and sustainable economy.
Housing must be viewed as a social right and not simply as a commodity. We have a collective responsibility to ensure that we create housing that is affordable to all households including those with low and modest incomes.
Our existing models bid up land values and distribute the unearned benefits of intensification efforts largely to private developers and investors. Our planning and zoning tools fail to ensure that the benefits of intensification are shared between developers and the community so that lands are transferred to public bodies and used to create affordable homes and rental units. All these market failures need to be reduced and/or eliminated. More details on our proposals can be found here.
