The Housing HUB’s purpose is to gather, organize, and make available knowledge resources related to affordable housing and to centralize the efforts of community organizations and the events that take place that influence and affect our shared mission of affordable housing for all.
In the Housing HUB you can find over 1000 academic studies, expert reports, community organization case studies, municipal documents, and best practice guides, along with events, actions, and organizations related to affordable housing.
I hope you can use the information found here to become better informed on the issues involved, take inspiration from the documented battles and innovative ways of other cities and groups to preserve and produce affordable housing, and use this collection of resources to advocate for affordable housing in Toronto and elsewhere.
The Housing HUB has only just begun and will require further reconfiguring to add (sub)topics, new media forms, additional literature, and most of all community input. With all this in mind, the Housing HUB is looking for ideas, comments, suggestions, and content recommendations. The Housing HUB is also just me at the moment and could use help in continuing its growth so please reach out if you would like to join me in this new endeavour.
Please use this form for feedback or send me an email at chrisroberton@gmail.
The Importance of Academic Research:
Over the past several decades billions of dollars have been spent on research into the multitude of issues and topics involved in housing affordability, the production and preservation of affordable housing, and the struggling populations who bear the brunt of these culminating factors.
Research from around the anglosphere (North America, UK, Europe, Australia, etc.) is valuable to all advocates living within these regions as all citizens living within these countries face remarkably similar situations and actors involved:
- rising urban land prices
- low- and middle-income housing affordability hardship
- government disinvestment in social housing and the latter’s need for rehabilitation
- financialization (REITs, mortgages-backed securities, etc.)
- policy influence from real estate, banking, and business sectors
- institutional investors, private equity, and corporate entities
- neoliberal governments and cash-strapped, growth-centered, municipal councils
- popular media capture by powerful groups and wealthy elites
- promotion of homeownership and its ideology
Academic Research Can Aid Affordable Housing Advocacy in a Number of Ways:
- academic studies can reveal larger themes at work and connections that exist between issues
- academic studies can show issues and factors in historical perspective
- academic studies can shed light on innovative ways that cities have used to fund and fight for affordable housing
- academic studies document the methods by which community groups have won or lost campaigns
- academic studies can be used to bolster advocate’s arguments and campaign demands
- academic studies can aid in creating a supportive narrative from the media
- academic studies can be used to inform and press for policy creation/change
- academic studies can be used to inform and help guide further studies controlled by, and in full collaboration with, the community
How the Database Works:
Clicking on the drop-down menus (top right of homepage) will reveal the site’s database of topics related to affordable housing. All topics list citations and abstracts (summaries), and associated tags of each article/ebook/dissertation/report so you can do word searches within bibliographies (such as country/region – Europe, Canada, US, or document type – dissertation, ebook, report, etc.). The future plan is to have each bibliography sorted by region/country. Graduate dissertations and theses (which yield the most substantive research and references to other’s research on similar topics) have also been tagged as such (tag: dissertation/thesis).
Many articles/reports in the database are restricted in their access by paywalls. Click on the ‘How To Access Articles in Database‘ post for instructions on how to access these for free (or alternatively feel free to send me an email at chrisroberton@gmail.com and I will get you the materials you’re after).
The website’s database currently only contains, for the majority, articles and reports from academic and government institutions. The database needs far more from community organizations and other citizen sources.
Please reach out to me with your thoughts, media for inclusion in the database, events to add to the calendar, or most importantly let me know if this website can help your group out by hosting anything from your campaign by emailing me at chrisroberton@gmail.com or by filling out this form.
Stay safe out there,
Christopher Roberton