HOUSE Canada – info@housecanada.org
Housing Our University Students Equitably (HOUSE) is a newly established and incorporated non-profit organization whose mission is to create new quality affordable housing for young people who are post-secondary students and recent graduates. Founded by students involved in the non-profit and co-operative housing sectors, we advocate for, research, and develop affordable and community-oriented student housing.
We believe that access to equitable student housing provides important social benefits to students and non-student community members. Benefits to students include lowering the overall cost of education and being able to access housing geared explicitly towards student needs. The wider community benefits include reduced competition from students on the rental housing market, particularly in low-mid income neighbourhoods surrounding post-secondary institutions, which will help increase vacancy rates while lowering rents. Decreasing costs associated with post-secondary education increases access to these institutions for students from lower-income backgrounds. Reducing the competition on the rental market can prevent vulnerable households from being evicted by landlords seeking to access higher incomes from their properties by marketing them on a per-room rental to students. Recent post-secondary graduates, particularly those from low-income families, have a particularly hard time economically balancing working, paying off school debt, and trying to establish themselves in their field.
HOUSE intends to address some of the systemic issues in affordable housing development by adopting a non-profit development model created by UTILE, a Quebec-based student housing organization. Our long term goal is to support building a whole new sector of non-profit affordable housing development focused on students and young adults. Our goal is to create a model that allows us to provide in-perpetuity affordable housing that is financially self-sufficient.
Affordable Housing Committee at York – housingyorku@gmail.com
The Affordable Housing Committee (AHC) is a student-led organization whose mission is to realize the development of large-scale affordable housing on or near York University and its three main campuses in the Greater Toronto Area. The committee is financially supported by student levies and contributions from our student unions, labour unions and community organizations members. The committee comprises students, professors, staff, alumni and members of the wider community representing the different unions and organizations. The Affordable Housing Committee at York University and HOUSE Canada have a close relationship. AHC currently serves as a vehicle for democratic representation for the collection of annual student levies from York University students dedicated to the study, promotion, and development of affordable and cooperative student housing.
To date, AHC has secured a graduate student levy at York University granting it the ability to hire an executive director, a secretary, and an executive team of housing activists and advocates pushing towards more affordable and available housing at York University. More recently, AHC has incorporated HOUSE, a non-profit housing organization in Canada that is run by students for students. Through these efforts, AHC is working towards securing collaborative partnerships with student unions and post-secondary institutions across Canada. AHC has also been involved in research, conferences, community and municipal consultations, and has continued to make progress towards the goal of building affordable housing at/near York University. We have successfully participated in StudentDwellTO, a pan-University research project focused on the housing needs of students across the GTA. We are working with York University and all stakeholders with the aim of securing land for a development in the near future.
Canadian Communities Land Trust – info@communitieslandtrust.com
The Canadian Communities Land Trust (CCLT) is a non-profit land trust dedicated to advancing community ownership across Canada. It is a land trust owned by community nonprofit and cooperative organizations and aims to operate in places without existing Community Land Trusts, or the local capacity to operate a Community Land Trust. Our goal is to acquire land, housing, and or space dedicated to the development of housing by developing and leveraging existing networks between the CCLT and its community partners, and to transform these spaces into area where a diverse range of communities – from seniors to youth – are able to access needed clinical, social, and/or community services. CCLT seeks to work with its community-based and cross-country partners to identify and engage with donors and sponsors as a means of forwarding development efforts to meet the needs and interests of each respective community. CCLT acts as a bridge and/or development vessel for which underserved and/or underrepresented communities can access land and/or housing as needed.
While CCLT focus on securing space for all types of community uses, we have a ‘housing-first’ approach that focuses on secure sites for (1) supportive housing for folks living with developmental disabilities and/or mental illness, (2) emergency and/or transitional housing for individuals facing and/or at immediate risk of homelessness, and (3) affordable housing cooperatives and/or community-oriented housing, in particular for students and for seniors. We recognize that access to housing has a significant impact on where an individual and/or community lives, and by consequence their access to services in the community. That’s why the CCLT is driven to help members of the community understand the true value and potential preserving access to land over many generations. Our goal is to encourage individuals and families to contribute to their respective communities by donating and/or bequesting their land and/or home, thereby granting the CCLT the ability to create and develop needed housing and/or community services.
Beyond housing, our goal is to increase community-owned space, with services that help increase the standard of living in communities. Broadly, our objective is to relieve poverty by establishing the material conditions for the development of facilities dedicated to supporting low-mid income individuals or families that are otherwise in need of community services,such as community kitchens, free stores, community bike centres.
York Community Housing Association – info@ycha.ca
The York Community Housing Association (YCHA) is a student-led outreach group founded in 2018 that dedicates itself to helping anyone living in/looking for a place in the York Community. Our mission is to collectivize the voices and lived experiences of residents, advocating on their behalf in public forums, and empowering tenants by educating them about their rights and responsibilities as per the Residential Tenancy Act and the guidelines provided by the Landlord and Tenant Board Tribunal. YCHA’s focus is on ensuring that the York Community is a safer, more secure, and more inclusive place to live for all residents, and our goal is to educate, empower, and enact positive and substantive change in York University Heights.
YCHA has mobilized tenants in the Village at York University around municipal housing consultations held by the City of Toronto. As keynote speaker at the International Symposium on Housing at York University, YCHA developed a working partnership with the StudentDwellTO project, through which we produced and published a podcast with guests ranging from housing advocates and activists, to Villagers, students, urban planners and designers, policy analysts, and lawyers, which outline the struggles and opportunities in living in an unlicensed and unregulated housing marketplace near York University’s campus.
York Non-Profit Housing Society Co-operative – yorkhousingcoop@gmail.com
The York Non-Profit Housing Society Cooperative (YHSC) is a newly incorporated non-profit leased housing cooperative society dedicated to organizing students and young adults around the disparities in housing that are shaping their personal, professional, and social development by promoting the study and development of leased-housing cooperatives near post-secondary institutions in Toronto. Our goal is to assist students, young adults, staff, faculty, and alumni living in privately regulated and often precarious multi-tenant (rooming) houses off-campus transform their properties into leased housing cooperatives.
YHSC seeks to identify, engage with, and/or organize approximately 1000+ landlords/multi-tenant housing operators, and 5,000+ students and their neighbours around leased housing cooperatives, starting with the York University Height and Black Creek neighborhoods. We have an agreement with one landlord who supports our progression vision to transform their multi-tenant (rooming house) into leased housing cooperatives, and we are currently talking to other prospective landlords. Our overarching objective is to help students find affordable, high-quality and stable housing, while providing a benefit to landlords (no-to-low vacancies, high-quality tenants, lower operating costs) of having a leased housing cooperatives, a model which grants members – as opposed to tenants – collective control over their housing/living conditions, while creating affordable and community-oriented/cooperative housing for students and young adults living in Black Creek and York University Heights.
Guyana Community House – info@guyanacommunityhouse.com
Guyana Community House TO is an organized effort by a diverse group of volunteers from the Guyanese-Canadian diaspora to create an affordable housing cooperative and community centre for our community in the Greater Toronto Area. Inspired by the efforts of other ethnocultural communities, our project aims to bring the Guyanese-Canadian community together in a space that would provide affordable housing and social services to those who need it (seniors, single-parent households, new immigrants, etc.) and establish a community centre to serve our cultural and social needs.
Despite boasting a population of over 200,000 in the Guyanese-Canadian diaspora, with the vast majority of them living in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area (GTHA); there are no ethno-cultural community centres, services, and/or communal spaces for our community. Our goal is thus to realize the promotion and development of space and access points dedicated to addressing the personal, social, and cultural needs of the Guyanese-Canadian community in the GTHA.
York Housing Coalition
The York Housing Coalition is an informal coalition involving three non-profit groups hoping to develop affordable housing on York University’s surplus land. The groups are AHC (York Affordable Housing Committee), ASHOY (Affordable Sustainable Home Ownership at York – a partnership between Prof. Jose Etcheverry’s Climate Change Solutions Park and Michael Labbe’s Home Opportunities organization) and Guyana Community House, and in collaboration with HOUSE, YCHA (York Community Housing Association) and YNHSC (York Non-Profit Housing Society Co-operative). We collaborate to advance York University providing land for affordable housing.