The ongoing housing affordability crisis has cast a harsh light upon current approaches to housing provision, highlighting the acute limitations of a housing system built largely upon private single-family homeownership as a means of both shelter and household wealth. Despite the clear need for alternative models, promising shared-equity homeownership models such as limited-equity housing cooperatives and Community Land Trusts face substantial financial and institutional constraints to expansions. Furthermore, there is only limited evidence regarding the effectiveness of such models in improving household outcomes with respect to wealth, health, poverty exposure, and spatial access.
Drawing from a series of studies based in the United States, this talk provides an overview of the landscape of alternatives to conventional single-family homeownership and illustrates the multifaceted impacts of shared-equity homeownership on the individual outcomes of participating households. It is found that shared-equity alternatives to conventional single-family homeownership occupy a small niche within the U.S. housing system, far outpaced by other less formal methods of shared homeownership. It is further revealed that those households which do participate in shared-equity homeownership models experience substantial increases in wealth and spatial accessibility over time, but that they are also exposed to higher neighborhood poverty and negative health environments. It is concluded that while the wealth-building benefit of shared-equity homeownership models is substantial, structural limitations prevent such models from being equitably distributed across the urban landscape.
This talk concludes by assessing the implications of these findings for the future of alternatives to conventional homeownership in North America, highlighting the impacts of ongoing barriers to successful implementation as well as the potential for such models to offer meaningful sources of affordable housing and homeownership in the future
*Please note: this is on online event. Zoom details will be sent out closer to the session*
About the speaker
Alex Ramiller is an Assistant Professor in Geography & Planning at the University of Toronto. His research uses large datasets to explore the impact of housing and land use policy on urban spatial inequality, with a particular focus on the interaction between housing programs, neighborhood context, and individual outcomes such as income, wealth, and debt.
