Philip Blond’s recent entry on the Guardian UK’s housing network blog, Putting the ‘Social’ Back into Social Housing has me thinking about what’s going on in our own backyard.
The blog generated a lot of buzz on Twitter last week among social housing professionals. Blond is the director of UK think-tank Res Publica and has been called by the Telegraph “a [...]

Next year it will be 25 years since the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless (IYSH).
After 25 years, what do we know now?  Short answer is “Lots!”  How are we doing?  Short answer is “lost ground.”  What will we have accomplished in the 25 years?  Short answer is “No short answer.”  Where do we go for the next 25?  [...]

Privatize social housing? For many of us, it’s a mighty scary-sounding concept.
I know that when Toronto Mayor Rob Ford first mused about privatizing Toronto Community Housing, the first image to pop into my head was a mass sell-off. But when I began to talk to housing experts in the UK to learn from their privatization experiences, [...]

Well, I got one thing right about this week’s election results. I wasn’t the only Canadian who was “Back into Jack.”
But I have to confess I was caught off-guard by the Tory sweep to a decisive majority government.
The Tories learned this week – and perhaps knew all along – that they don’t need Quebec to form a [...]

Is Toronto Community Housing way too big? Is everyone else way too small?
According to the research, the answer seems to be “yes” and “yes.” But finding the right size is not so clear-cut.
Let’s start with Toronto Community Housing. It’s Canada’s housing giant at 58,000 units, the product of an amalgamation between the then Metro Toronto Housing Authority, Toronto Housing Company [...]

Jeffrey Griffiths, Auditor General for the City of Toronto, recently released his reports that identified a number of significant concerns regarding lack of spending controls and procurement practices at Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC).

The media coverage on the federal budget this week had me watching — and thinking — about Jack Layton.
Our orbits have overlapped since the early 1980s. I remember when Jack was a councillor at Toronto City Hall and I was there as a political assistant, just starting to get my hands on the housing file. He was young and buff, [...]

By now, you all know the story: damning Audit General’s report documenting chocolates from Holt Renfrew, a luxurious Christmas Party, appliances from China, losses on the stock market  (see: http://www.torontohousing.ca/webfm_send/7068 and http://www.torontohousing.ca/webfm_send/7065), heads roll and the civilian board resigns under pressure from the Mayor and councillors.
Toronto mayor Rob Ford tweets that “It’s time for accountability at TCHC. Tenants deserve better.” [...]

No-one wants to talk about social housing. That’s the advice I hear whenever I broach the subject of a public discussion about the future of social housing.
I know what they mean. The term “social housing” has become a weak brand – meaningless to many, or as the Lurker and Lurker 2.0 said in response to Lindsey’s last blog, associated with [...]

There’s no shortage of housing talk. Mortgage rules make front-page reading. Go to any party and you’ll hear someone talk about house prices, or the impossibility of finding a decent place to rent.
But there’s also a lot of housing talk that never goes beyond housing geeks like us. So I was pleased to see that Civic Action (the former Toronto [...]