We’re excited to share that School of Cities, along with SHS Consulting, has been awarded a grant from the CMHC under the National Housing Strategy Solutions Labs Program to support the community housing sector efforts to increase its housing supply across the country over the next decade.
“Scaling Up Canada’s Community Housing Sector” will systematize efforts to consolidate – or ‘bundle’ – the assets of multiple providers in a region while maintaining their organizational autonomy. Bundling equity lowers risk for the financing of larger projects, and increases capacity for the development of large government sites with mixed-income housing built for social benefit. In contrast to a merger/acquisition model, bundling can be faster and less conflictual.
The lab takes a cross-Canada, bilingual and multicultural approach, based on best practices and peer learnings. It is a game-changer for the sector. Our proposed approach will build a prototype model based on three diverse case studies, and then refine the model at four workshops held across the country with regional community housing providers.
The three case studies will be:
- BC Community Land Trust [BC-CLT]
- Ottawa Community Housing [OCH]
- Plancher (in Quebec)
The first report on the results, due in the summer of 2025, will include a prototype model drawn from the case studies. Then we will hold workshops in:
- Montreal, to explore next steps for Plancher;
- Vancouver, to work with Indigenous providers through the Aboriginal Housing Management Association [AHMA], using a bundling model on both First Nations and other government sites;
- Toronto, to further develop the Cooperative Housing Federation of Toronto [CHFT] work in bundling community assets in that region in order to bid for government sites;
- St. John’s, to further support Atlantic regional bundling with Pivot Housing Solutions.
Each workshop will allow further refinement of the model, which we will share widely with our final report in August 2026.
Read the Government of Canada’s announcement about the first batch of NHS Solutions Labs.
