With skyrocketing housing costs and limited availability of buildable land, coupled with the environmental and social costs of housing insecurity and unsustainable building practices, Canada’s housing sector is ripe for innovative disruption.
In 2020, the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation (CMHC) launched the Housing Supply Challenge, inviting citizens, stakeholders, and experts to propose solutions to the barriers to new housing supply. The challenge is now in its fifth round: the Level-Up Challenge.
Level-Up invited applications from innovators with ideas for addressing housing supply barriers and solutions that can deploy more affordable housing faster and with fewer resources, by accelerating and de-risking construction, building, and design. Its goal is to mobilize innovators to enhance housing productivity and accelerate housing delivery by addressing long and uncertain timelines. Level-Up also aims to scale tested solutions, to increase the supply of quality community and market housing, and to establish cross-sector solver communities.
Eighteen innovators received funding to scale their solutions in the first stage of this round. To support the innovators, five scaling hubs were selected and grouped with innovators to provide access to infrastructure, mentorship, business advice, peer support, accountability, and networking opportunities.
School of Cities, in partnership with University of Toronto Entrepreneurship, was among the scaling hubs, which also included Foresight Canada, DMZ and Groundbreak Ventures, The Decision Lab, and Highline Beta.
Timeline
The HSC Level-Up Challenge began in March 2024 and concludes in March 2025.
- Stage 1 (March 2024 – September 2024): 18 semifinalist innovators were selected for an award of $1 million each to scale their housing solutions
- Stage 2 (October 2024 – March 2025): Nine finalists were advanced to this stage, and will work to demonstrate the complete impact of their solutions [learn more]
- Stage 3 (March 2025): Three innovators will be recognized as game changers and considered winners of this challenge
Innovators
To learn more about the eighteen semi-finalist innovators and their housing solutions, visit their websites:
- ACHAT (Alliance des corporations d’habitations abordables du territoire du Québec)
- AGRTQ (Association des groupes de ressources techniques du Québec)
- BC Housing
- BuildingIN
- EllisDon Community Builders
- Flourish
- Innovation Building Group
- MDDL
- One Bowl
- Promise Robotics
- Ratio.City
- ReHousing
- Resimate
- Rural Impact Canada
- Serotiny Group
- Tapestry Community Capital
- UTILE (L’Unité de travail pour l’implantation de logement étudiant)
- Vancity Community Foundation
The School of Cities and University of Toronto Entrepreneurship supported the innovators in various capacities in stage 1 of the Challenge. Here are a selection of the research and events that helped the innovators in their scaling journey:
Research
Tracking Gentle Density in Canada
A webpage that shows the uptake of detached and attached accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in multiple cities across Canada using charts and interactive maps. It also summarizes the status of current municipal and provincial policies.
Scaling up Modular Construction
This report seeks to address how modular housing can be scaled up, with an emphasis on overcoming constraints by focusing on the relationships between developers, manufacturers, and construction companies.
Enabling the Missing Middle: Definitions, evidence, barriers and promising practices
This research collects evidence from local and international practices to suggest a set of Missing Middle (MM) enablers. There is evidence that MM reform, if comprehensively undertaken, can increase affordable, well-located supply of a range of homes, which in turn can decrease rents for low and moderate-income households. MM enablers range from zoning and building code reforms to reducing or eliminating development taxes that punish new development.
Big Ideas for Small Town Affordable Homes: Cost savings of standardized design
This report seeks to surmise how standardized designs can address design costs, delays, and approvals as barriers to housing production, while also expediating production of missing middle housing. The first half of the report summarizes data found through a literature review. Standardized design, mass customization, and permissive zoning are several interconnected aspects that together can engender greater housing productivity. The second half of the report is dedicated to interviews with three key informants: development consultants with experience working on nonmarket housing projects in B.C., Ontario, and the Atlantic provinces.
Events
Housing Finance Forum
The School of Cities and Highline Beta organized an event to bring stakeholders around the table to discuss the financing needs and solutions to enable accessory dwelling units, multiplexes, and… Read more
HSC Innovator Mixer
The School of Cities and the University of Toronto Entrepreneurship hosted seven HSC innovators to present their solutions in response to the housing crisis in Canada. The event provided a… Read more
Unpacking Multiplexes
The School of Cities in collaboration with ReHousing and Realist.ca organized an evening where we dove into the world of multiplexing, from contemplation to execution.
Partners
Carolyn Whitzman: Dr. Carolyn Whitzman is a housing and social policy researcher and is the author, co-author or lead editor of six books and over 100 articles and reports, including Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis (UBC On Point Press, 2024). She is a Senior Housing Policy Researcher at University of Toronto’s School of Cities.
Cherise Burda: Cherise Burda is the former executive director of Toronto Metropolitan University’s City Building Institute, where she brought policy innovations to bear on today’s critical urban challenges. Cherise was previously the Pembina Institute’s Ontario director, where she developed research, advocacy, and communications strategies on transportation, sustainable cities, and clean energy. She has written dozens of publications and regularly blogs, tweets, and addresses live audiences.
University of Toronto Entrepreneurship (UTE) is the connective tissue for all the incredible entrepreneurship programming that happens across the University of Toronto’s three campuses. It has 12 campus accelerators that support almost 1,000 entrepreneurial teams annually. Over the past decade U of T startups have raised over 3.5B in funding and created over 10,000 jobs.
Disclaimer
The School of Cities received funding from CMHC to support the Level-Up Round of the Housing Supply Challenge. However, School of Cities bears sole responsibility for the accuracy and appropriateness of this publication. CMHC accepts no responsibility for the content, interpretations, conclusions, or opinions expressed in this publication or other materials resulting from the supported work.