Join us as Carolyn Whitzman discusses her recently published book, Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis.
Home Truths addresses Canada’s housing crisis from all sides, including exploring what adequate housing looks like, providing ideas on how to resolve homelessness, explaining why nonmarket housing is crucial for Canada, and showing how and why to tackle ever-growing wealth disparities between renters and those who own.
About the speakers
Dr. Carolyn Whitzman is a housing and social policy researcher. She has worked as an expert advisor to UBC’s Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART) project, which developed standardized best practices for analysing housing need, using government land for nonmarket housing, and nonmarket property acquisition, using detailed, open data. These tools have influenced federal housing policy. Currently, she works as a senior housing researcher at University of Toronto’s School of Cities, analysing best practices to scale affordable ‘missing middle’, modular, and replicable housing. She is on the federal government’s Expert Panel on the Homebuilding Industry.
Carolyn is the author, co-author or lead editor of six books, including Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis (UBC On Point Press, October 2024) and Clara at the Door with a Revolver: the scandalous Black suspect, the exemplary white son, and the murder that shocked Toronto (UBC On Point Press, 2023). She is the author or co-author of over 80 book chapters, articles, and reports, on issues related to the right to the city. She has provided expertise to national, state/provincial and local governments, UN Women, UN Habitat, and private and non-profit organizations.
Ray Williams is a Co-Founder & Chair of the Black Opportunity Fund established in 2020.
He is a recently retired Vice-Chairman, Financial Markets at National Bank Financial with four decades of experience in Global Capital Markets.
In this role, he was responsible for facilitating engagements with strategic accounts, working closely within financial markets to promote the banks’ One Mission synergistic and client-centric approach. He also represented the Bank in several Sustainable Finance forums and transition initiatives.
In addition, he was a key contributor in the elaboration & articulation of the Bank’s Affordable Housing commitments.
As a former Financial Services executive, specialized in global capital markets, Mr. Williams has extensive experience in Cash and Derivatives products in multiple asset classes, Infrastructure Financing, Provincial & Federal Liability Management, and Mortgage Finance Companies (MFC) Financing and Hedging of Securitized Product.
Mr. Williams is also committed to community engagement, in particular around diversity and inclusion efforts. He serves on a variety of organization leadership boards including 100Strong Foundation.
He also sits as an Executive-in-Residence (EiR) at Rotman School of Management and on the Board of George Brown College Foundation (GBCF), The Institute for Research in Public Policy (IRPP); Toronto Global and Canadian Ditchley Foundation as part of his numerous philanthropic engagements.
He is also a Past & Founding President (2000) and continuing member of The Canadian Association of Urban Financial Professionals (CAUFP) the pre-eminent professional trade organization for minorities in the financial services industry. He is also a recent addition to the Board of the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation (CMHC).
John Michael McGrath (moderator) is a journalist who has covered Ontario politics and policy for over a decade, most recently as a writer and podcast host for TVO, the provincial public broadcaster. He’s been writing about housing policy even longer than that, with a focus on municipal and provincial barriers to building more and better homes.
