References and Further Reading
Housing Bibliography
A selection of references that are useful for understanding housing in Canada.
Advisory Committee on Reconstruction. (1944). Housing and Community Planning: Final report of subcommittee. Ottawa: Government of Canada. Based on a housing need analysis of three income categories, the ‘Curtis Report’ recommended the Government of Canada support 33% social housing for lower income Canadians, and 33% purpose-built rental for moderate income Canadians.
Dennis, M., & Fish, S. (1972). Low-Income Housing: programs in search of a policy. Ottawa: CMHC. Based on a housing and policy analysis that focused on income categories, this report recommended the Government of Canada support 45% social and subsidized housing for low- and moderate-income Canadians, using land and home banking policies.
Yuen, B. (2007). Squatters No More: Singapore Social Housing. Global Urban Development Magazine, 3. Tells of how Singapore addressed its huge housing deficit when it became an independent nation in 1964, using a good needs assessment and aggressive land banking.
Lawson, J., & Ruonavaara, H. (2020). Land policy for affordable and inclusive housing: An international review. Helsinki: Smartland Research Program, University of Turku. A great recent overview of land policy for social and affordable housing, including public land for non-profit housing and land acquisition.
BC Non-Profit Housing Association (2021) Canadian Rental Housing Index. Current Canadian best practice in publicly available data on rental housing affordability.
Shinn, Marybeth, & Khadduri, Jill. (2020). How Finland Ended Homelessness. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 22(2), 75-80. Since the late 1980s, Finland has been using a consistent way to measure housing need and supply, with annual reports at the local and national levels. It uses public land for non-profit housing and has acquired low cost housing for its successful Housing First program.
British Columbia’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner. (2020). Disaggregated demographic data collection in British Columbia: The grandmother perspective. A strong call for disaggregated data.
Young, Rebekah. (2023). Canadian Housing Affordability Hurts. Toronto: Scotiabank. Why Canada needs to double its non-profit housing supply over the next decade.
Raza, S., Biss, M., Porter, B., and Schwan, K. (2021) The Right to Housing in action: three new reports on housing law and policy. Three reports – a gender and intersectional analysis, an analysis of the National Housing Strategy in light of Canadian human rights law, and an international overview of adequate housing – intended to influence the next stage of the National Housing Strategy.
Aboriginal Housing Management Association. (2022). British Columbia Urban Rural and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy. A comprehensive Indigenous needs assessment and costed out strategy for BC.
HART Prototype: Kelowna
In our first stage (March-September 2021), we prototyped the tools in the City of Kelowna, a mid-sized (140,000) BC municipality. We also conducted a national survey on readiness for these tools. The following prototype report demonstrates an initial methodology for HART, serving as a blueprint by outlining core concepts, data and methods before committing to a final methodology.
We would like to thank the City of Kelowna for being an exceptional partner in the prototyping process. The reader should note that some findings for the City of Kelowna in this prototype report would not be repeated in subsequent analysis due to refinement of the HART methodology.
Government Partner Meetings
Each month, the HART government partners and advisory committee meet to discuss tools and approaches, and exchange ideas and concerns regarding housing need, land assessment, and property acquisitions. Recordings of these meetings can be found here.
HART Evaluations
HART is funded through the CMHC Housing Supply Challenge Round 1: Data-driven solutions, and as such we regularly evaluate our progress against the goals of the challenge and our own goals from the outset of the project. View our most recent evaluation report below.
HART Community Housing Reports
In 2023, CMHC asked HART to support communities across the country with completing Housing Needs Assessments. Between 2023 and 2024, HART worked closely with communities from Yukon to Newfoundland to develop a comprehensive report on their housing needs. In addition to working and creating custom housing needs reports, our team also developed the BC HNR Calculator in response to provincial requirements, and we’ve been working on automating more detailed housing needs reports for all communities. If you want to be the first to hear about this research and any updates from our team, follow us on X or LinkedIn, and subscribe to our newsletter!
View all the custom reports we completed below:
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