The housing affordability crisis requires coordinated, evidence-based solutions across all levels of government. We bring together researchers, students, community members and policymakers to examine and debate the causes and consequences of declining housing affordability and the processes and policies needed to bring about necessary change.
Affordable Missing Middle
The School of Cities partners with City Building TMU on the Affordable Missing Middle initiative, which explores and advances ways to add gentle density to our residential neighbourhoods to achieve affordability and equity.
The initiative has recently published a report on their 4-part webinar series ‘How to Put Affordable in the Missing Middle’ – read the report and the audience Q&As.
Affordable Housing Challenge Project
School of Cities also supports the Affordable Housing Challenge Project (AHCP), a collective that brings together scholars from across the University of Toronto, who are researching issues related to housing affordability from different disciplinary perspectives, with the objective of working together to research, discuss and debate the causes, processes, policies and consequences of declining housing affordability.
News, Media & Research
Enabling home ownership by streamlining multi-unit residential buildings stratification and co-ownership in Ontario
An introduction to co-ownership in Ontario
This video reviews some of the models for co-ownership in Ontario and across Canada and explores their possibilities and limitations.
Preservation of affordable housing
These two videos examine and define existing affordable housing, and look at some of the ways that cities in North America are framing policies and facing challenges to preserve it.
Neighbourhood Abandonment in the American Rust Belt
Unlike most neighbourhoods of its type in Detroit, the McDougall-Hunt area of the city’s near east side attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors per year. Home to the now-famous-but-once-reviled Heidelberg… Read more
Zahra Ebrahim and Kofi Hope in Toronto Star | How a new business incubator is breaking down barriers in the powerful world of GTA real estate development
Tracking Gentle Density in Toronto
Visualizing 10+ years of building permit data to track the uptake of secondary suites and laneway housing in the City of Toronto. Updated January 2024.
Matti Siemiatycki in New York Times | ‘It’s Our Central Park’: Uproar Rises Over Location of New Toronto Homes
Karen Chapple on CBC News | Rent Rage: You need to earn how much to live in Toronto?
Volume 2: Issue 1 | The Community Voices Project: A study into what residents value in Toronto’s inner suburbs
By Kofi Hope
Mapping exclusionary residential zoning in four Canadian cities
Maps of Canadian cities showing how more than 50% of the land zoned for residential development in most cities only allows for single detached homes.
Volume 1: Issue 6 | The Affordable Housing Challenge Project: Community land trusts as a tool for affordable housing provision in Toronto
By Susannah Bunce and Alan Walks
Volume 1: Issue 2 | Creative Mixed-Use Building: A made-in-Toronto solution
By Matti Siemiatycki