The Wellesley Institute’s Director of Housing and Innovation, Michael Shapcott, joined the City of Toronto Director of Affordable Housing, Sean Gadon, at a seminar with University of Toronto students on March 24.
Ending Homelessness In Kingston
Community forum and seminar with Queen’s University students, February 28, 2014: Presentation notes from the Wellesley Institute’s Director of Housing and Innovation, Michael Shapcott.
Homes For All: Social Housing In Toronto And Canada
The Wellesley Institute’s Director of Housing and Innovation, Michael Shapcott, presented to students at the University of Pennsylvania in March 2014 in Philadelphia. He focused on the links between housing and health in Toronto and Canada.
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Housing And Homelessness: Lenten Reflections
Housing and homelessness are not just concerns for the city centre. The Wellesley Institute’s Director of Housing and Homelessness, Michael Shapcott, delivered a presentation on March 19 to the Social Justice Committee at St Peter’s Erindale Anglican Church in Mississauga. Along with the presentation, he gave a list of useful housing and homelessness links and […]
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Federal Budget 2014 Fails To Deliver Housing Investments To Meet National Needs

Budgets are about priorities. Canada’s federal budget 2014 has failed to allocate a single new dollar for critical housing investments – despite the overwhelming national need and a growing chorus of experts pointing to the severe impact of the long-term erosion of existing federal housing investments. The latest federal budget repeats government commitments to tighten […]
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What’s My Big Idea? An Affordable Housing Trust Fund For Toronto

An affordable housing trust fund to deliver steady funding for desperately needed new affordable and healthy homes – that’s the Big Idea from the Housing and Innovation practice here at the Wellesley Institute that was published on Feb 3 as part of the Toronto Star’s Big Ideas initiative. Here’s the idea: What if Toronto had […]
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New Minimum Wage About Half Affordable Housing Wage

The Ontario government has announced that the minimum wage will move to $11 on June 1. My colleague Sheila Block has drawn the links between the minimum wage, racialized workers and poor health. But what about the minimum wage and affordable housing? The short answer: Even with the June boost, an employee working full-time for […]
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Removing Barriers To Family-Friendly Housing
Melbourne, Australia, like Toronto and many other cities around the world, is facing a shortage of affordable housing for families even as the private market builds relatively small new homes. Prof Carolyn Whitzman from the University of Melbourne was at the Wellesley Institute on January 21 to report on progress with her research and policy […]
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Toronto Faces More Housing Funding Cuts

Cold and blustery winds from elsewhere can drop Toronto into the deep freeze. That’s certainly true on the weather front, as the extreme cold alert declared by the City of Toronto at the start of 2014 has reminded us, and it’s also true in housing policy. Most of the hundreds of millions of dollars that […]
Winter Cold Brings More Federal Funding Chill

The new year brought skin-blistering cold to many parts of Canada. The extreme cold weather was a somber reminder of the critical importance of good quality, affordable housing for the personal health of individual Canadians, and underlined the value of housing in ensuring the social and economic health of communities and the entire country. Precarious […]
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