Affordable Housing

U of T expands housing options for students via partnership with home-sharing platform

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 18:41:27 +0000

U of T expands housing options for students via partnership with home-sharing platform

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 07/15/2024 - 14:41

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From left to right: Jackie Tanner, SpacesShared’s chief experience officer, Rylan Kinnon, SpacesShared’s CEO, and Arlene Clement, U of T’s director, Housing and TCard services (photo by Sydney Maddock)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Our Community

Affordable Housing

Housing

Student Life

Subheadline

SpacesShared facilitates home-sharing arrangements between students seeking affordable housing near campus and older adults looking to earn rent from their spare rooms

As part of its efforts to provide more access to student housing, the ��Ƶ has added a unique option that also helps address a community need near its three campuses: matching students in need of housing with older adults who have extra space in their homes.

The innovative offering is the result of a partnership between U of T and SpacesShared, an online platform that facilitates home-sharing agreements using a combination of algorithms and dedicated support staff.

Based in Toronto, SpacesShared was co-founded by U of T alumni and helps with every stage of the home-sharing process – from matching students and hosts to providing a platform for secure communication, carrying out background checks and processing rent payments

The partnership will enable U of T students to use SpacesShared to search for housing options near all three campuses, with U of T Housing Services encouraging homeowners in the Toronto area to sign up and help students secure a comfortable living environment – all while earning rental income for themselves.

“We’re excited to partner with SpacesShared and expand affordable housing options for students as well as offer older adults a way to leverage a spare bedroom for some extra income, company and companionship,” said Arlene Clement, director of Housing and TCard services at U of T Student Life. “This is addressing a need that we see in terms of affordable, safe housing and community connection.”

She added that homeowners and students interested in signing up for the platform can do so on the SpacesShared website or contact U of T Housing Services for guidance.

The partnership comes as U of T continues to seek out new ways to help students find suitable housing. In February, U of T announced that it acquired a 20-per-cent stake in the CampusOne residence building located near the St. George campus in a deal that gives the university preferential access to as many as 890 beds.

The university has also made headway on a number of new student residence buildings including Harmony Commons, which opened at U of T Scarborough last fall; the Oak House residence on Spadina Avenue, which is currently under construction; and the Phase IX Residence at U of T Mississauga, which is expected to be open in summer 2026.

As for SpacesShared, the platform provides yet another housing option for students while fostering mutually beneficial intergenerational interactions. SpacesShared also offers students the option of receiving discounts on their rent in exchange for helping with specific household tasks and chores.

“Home-sharing allows us to use the capacity that already exists in the community,” said Jackie Tanner, co-founder and chief experience officer at SpacesShared, who earned her master’s degree at U of T’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. “Older adults get to put their spare bedrooms toward earning extra income and getting a little bit of extra help around the house, and students get to find safe housing close to campus.”

After being vetted, both students and potential hosts set up a profile sharing information about themselves, including interests, hobbies and expectations around use of shared spaces in the home, guests, dietary restrictions and other lifestyle preferences. When a student reaches out to a prospective host, the pair can exchange messages and have video chats on the platform, with SpacesShared providing a comprehensive discussion guide to help determine the best fit. If the pair agree on a home-sharing arrangement, SpacesShared drafts an agreement for both parties to sign. Students then pay first and last months’ rent as a deposit – with the amount only forwarded to the host after the student confirms move-in.

SpacesShared then follows up with regular check-ins, with both hosts and students able to contact customer service for support.

“By pairing up these two demographics who have so much to offer one another, our aim is to provide a new way to facilitate a very old concept – home-sharing,” said co-founder and CEO Rylan Kinnon, who earned an honours bachelor of arts with a political science specialist and a minor in philosophy and history at U of T.

“We’re excited to be working with U of T to create housing relationships that are beneficial to both students and older adults.”

'Lost opportunity': Affordable housing needed in local development projects, U of T researcher says

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 14 Feb 2020 14:33:21 +0000

'Lost opportunity': Affordable housing needed in local development projects, U of T researcher says

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 02/14/2020 - 09:33

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Aerial view of The Strand, part of the Square One District development unveiled by Oxford Properties in Mississauga, Ont. (image via CNW Group/Oxford Properties Group Inc.)

Topic

Research and Innovation

U of T Mississauga

Mixed-use housing projects are based on questionable assumptions that increasing the supply of rental units will lead to more affordable housing – a problem ��Ƶ researcher Tara Vinodrai is highlighting after plans for a massive, 37-tower development in Mississauga’s City Centre neighbourhood were unveiled earlier this year.

Pointing to a study she co-authored in 2018 while at the University of Waterloo, Vinodrai says mixed-use developments like those favoured in Toronto and other municipalities actually decrease affordability and price out certain segments of the population.

She and her co-authors drew the conclusion after examining long-term change in Toronto, where mixed-use zoning is actively used, in the context of labour market changes.

“We’re seeing people priced out of the city,” says Vinodrai, an associate professor in U of T Mississauga’s department of geography and the director of the school’s new Master of Urban Innovation professional graduate program.

Part of the problem is the disappearance of the middle class, she says. Manufacturing is declining in favour of a growing technology-based economy with higher-earning jobs that require higher education. What is emerging is a division of the labour market, where people either have a lot of resources for housing or they have very few, according to Vinodrai.

Those in lower-earning jobs, she says, are increasingly unable to afford housing, particularly in mixed-use developments that are often in desirable locations with access to amenities and transit.

“Even in the mid-sized cities we’re starting to see a push on housing prices that makes it unaffordable, particularly for people in the lowest brackets.”

Tara Vinodrai, an associate professor in U of T Mississauga’s department of geography, says it’s ironic that many urban developments lack affordable housing units since they exclude the very people who need to be close to urban transit hubs or who work at local retail establishments (photo by Drew Lesiuczok)

In the case of Mississauga’s City Centre neighbourhood, the proposed 37-tower Square One District, unveiled by Oxford Properties in January, will include community buildings, green space, office space, retail, a transit hub and 18,000 residential units that are a mix of rentals and condominiums. There are no plans for affordable housing units that are priced below market rent.

Vinodrai calls this a “lost opportunity,” adding there’s an irony that these developments exclude the very people who need to be close to transit hubs or those who work at local retail shops.

One of the concerns Mississauga employers have is attracting young, bright minds because of the challenges they face finding housing. Yet, while the city’s newest development addresses an issue that helps with the labour market, Vinodrai says the city also needs housing for people who work lower-wage jobs.

“Without deliberate intervention, I don’t think you’re going to have a desirable outcome, which, from a planning standpoint, would be to ensure some form of equitable development,” she says.

Ontario municipalities already have planning tools at their disposal to address affordability, including density bonuses, where developers can build more units or taller structures than permitted if, in return, they set aside affordable or below-market housing.

Or there’s the approach being taken by Montreal. Starting in 2021, developers in the city will be required to set aside 20 per cent of new housing units for social housing, 20 per cent for affordable housing, and 10 to 20 per cent for family-sized units – or pay compensation to the city in land or cash.

“Mississauga has an opportunity to show leadership in the GTA and beyond in terms of considering these types of policy and planning tools to address housing affordability, and it doesn’t have to be at the expense of attracting the best and brightest minds to the city’s downtown,” Vinodrai says.

“I would hope the city could push back either through regulation or some kind of deal, I would hope they could think about requiring that the developer set aside even a small proportion of units for below-market.”

U of T, OCAD, Ryerson, York collaborate in massive joint research project on affordable housing

lanthierj — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 17:57:04 +0000

U of T, OCAD, Ryerson, York collaborate in massive joint research project on affordable housing

lanthierj Fri, 09/22/2017 - 13:57

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Kearon Roy Taylor is one of the student leads for StudentDwellTO (photo by Romi Levine)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Collaboration

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

OISE

Subheadline

StudentDwellTO builds on StudentMoveTO

It takes ��Ƶ student Syed Imam about an hour and a half on public transit to get to the university’s downtown Toronto campus from his home in Mississauga.

That’s almost three hours of daily commuting, five days a week, for Imam, who studies civil engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

“I'm spending a little over $250 a month on commuting. If there was something reasonably close to campus, I would definitely choose to stay there,” says Imam, who spends almost 12 hours a day downtown to “optimize commuting times.”

Imam’s commuting woes aren’t unique – they’re a symptom of a larger issue facing post-secondary students in the Greater Toronto Area: the lack of affordable housing.

Recognizing the urgency of the issue, the presidents of Toronto’s four universities – the ��Ƶ, OCAD, York and Ryerson – are teaming up for a new initiative called StudentDwellTO, bringing together almost 100 faculty and students to take an in-depth look at student housing in the GTA.

“It’s yet another example of how the impact of our collective efforts can be far greater than the sum of individual contributions,” says Shauna Brail. An associate professor, teaching stream, Brail is U of T's presidential adviser on urban engagement and director of the urban studies program in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

This follows a previous collaboration among the four presidents – a massive survey of student travel behaviour called StudentMoveTO. That survey uncovered an unsettling narrative – students said a lack of housing affordability led to longer daily commute times, lower levels of campus engagement and, in some cases, hidden homelessness.

Considering the number of post-secondary students in the GTA – more than 180,000 spread across seven campuses – these findings are a big deal, says Brail, who will be U of T’s representative for StudentDwellTO’s steering committee.

��Ƶ president Meric Gertler agrees, emphasizing the importance of a rich co-curricular life for undergraduate and graduate students.

“We want our students to be able to take full advantage of all the opportunities offered by a U of T education,” the president says. “The university experience extends far beyond the classrooms, laboratories and lecture halls. By providing the research needed to develop innovative policy on student housing, this project has the potential to help students participate more fully in university life and make the cost of attending university more affordable.”

The new project will look at affordability from a multidisciplinary perspective. Researchers in architecture, education, engineering, psychology and geography will collaborate with GTA community partners.

“The opportunities for knowledge exchange are pretty incredible,” says Kearon Roy Taylor, a graduate student at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design and one U of T’s two student leads on the project.

Mauricio Quiros-Pacheco is one of the faculty leads of StudentDwellTO (photo by Romi Levine)

Results of the 18-month initiative, which will include a heavy research component, and data collection from a wide-scale survey and focus groups, will be made public. The subject matter will also be incorporated into courses, which will look at case studies from around the world on how to make housing more affordable.

The collaborative nature of StudentDwellTO across a variety of disciplines will encourage creative thinking, says Mauricio Quiros-Pacheco, an assistant professor, teaching stream, at the Daniels Faculty and one of the project’s academic leads. And because there’s no particular outcome expected, the teams will be able to experiment with a variety of ideas.

“We can be a bit more daring, going deeper into studies, trying to understand the potential of the city and the four institutions to address the crisis,” he says.

Marcelo Vieta, an assistant professor at U of T’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, is looking forward to applying this kind of out-of-the-box thinking to StudentDwellTO research.

“With me, it's around how to live differently and how to live better. How do we address some of the social ills we face by influencing policy and practices?”
StudentDwellTO has the potential to positively influence the affordable housing landscape in Toronto, but in order to do so, it’s crucial that students play a central role in both their input and research contributions, says Brail.

“Our students are leading-edge thinkers who bring \insight and intelligence to bear on this work,” she says. “As rising researchers, their understanding of the conditions, challenges and possibilities and their ability to shape the outcomes – potentially for future generations of students – is exciting.”

Housing crisis pushing people into rural areas with already stretched health services: U of T research

ullahnor — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 14:50:53 +0000

Housing crisis pushing people into rural areas with already stretched health services: U of T research

ullahnor Mon, 09/11/2017 - 10:50

Cutline

People are seeking affordable housing in remote communities that are already overburdened and don’t have specialized health and social services, according to a new U of T study (photo by Indigo Skies Photography via Flickr)

Nicole Bodnar

Author legacy

Nicole Bodnar

Topic

Breaking Research

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Health services in rural and remote areas are struggling to cope with an influx of people on low, fixed incomes moving to these areas, researchers at U of T's Dalla Lana School of Public Health have found.

No longer able to survive in southern Ontario due to skyrocketing housing costs, people are seeking affordable housing in remote communities that are already overburdened and don’t have specialized health and social services.

“An influx of low-income people with complex conditions places additional pressures on rural health services that are already struggling to overcome the challenges posed by lack of services, distance from specialized care and high physician turn-over,” said Kathleen Rice, a medical anthropologist and post-doctoral researcher at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

Rice worked with Associate Professor Fiona Webster on a study recently published in Social Science & Medicine. The study is among the first to examine the migration trend to northern and remote communities as a consequence of rising housing costs in urban areas.

Based on observations and interviews with primary care providers, clinical directors, policymakers and patients in two remote recourse communities in northern Ontario, they found that people with complex care needs and few personal resources were intentionally relocating to economically depressed resource towns in search of affordable housing.

“These people are putting their pragmatic need for affordable housing ahead of their need for specialized medical and social care,” said Webster, who is affiliated with the Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation. Webster is a medical sociologist heading up a program of research funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research using qualitative approaches to study the care of people with complex needs with a particular focus on chronic pain.

“While conversations about housing costs in southern Ontario typically focus on the implications for young Canadians, for the vibrancy of urban neighbourhoods, and for the Canadian economy at large, we rarely hear about how these issues affect rural communities,” said Rice.

“Many of the people who are leaving southern Ontario for these northern resource towns are unable to work due to chronic illness, and these communities lack the resources to provide the complex care that many of them require. Current programs and policies do not account for this,” said Rice.

Globally, people living in rural areas tend to have poorer health relative to their urban counterparts, and many rural towns in Ontario are experiencing growing poverty and unemployment, which has resulted in a dramatic increase in mental health and addictions.

That’s why, researchers say, policies aimed at mitigating urban-rural health disparities should account for the influx of low-income people with complex chronic conditions. Study findings suggest that funding for pain and mental health disorders are especially needed.

U of T's Richard Florida delves into inequality and rising housing prices in cities

ullahnor — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 17:45:48 +0000

U of T's Richard Florida delves into inequality and rising housing prices in cities

ullahnor Wed, 04/12/2017 - 13:45

Cutline

Richard Florida's new book, “The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle-Class” is gaining media attention (photo by VV Nincic via Flickr)

Topic

Rotman School of Management

Books

The latest book by U of T's Richard Florida, The New Urban Crisis, is gaining attention for exploring the dark side of the back-to-the-city movement – one that has led to rising housing prices, economic disparity and the decline of middle-class neighbourhoods.

Excerpts of the book have appeared in the The Atlantic's CityLab and Florida has been featured in the Toronto Star and Toronto Life.

Florida also appeared this week on National Public Radio's Morning Edition.

“The middle class in this country has declined,” he told host Steve Inskeep. “But, more importantly to me, the middle-class neighborhoods, those platforms for the American dream, have been decimated.”

Check the NPR interview

Read excerpts from his new book at CityLab

Florida, a University Professor and director of cities at the Rotman School of Management's Martin Prosperity Institute, has for years promoted what he calls the creative class. For cities to prosper, he argued in his groundbreaking book, The Rise of the Creative Class, they needed to attract techies, innovators and entrepreneurs.

Read his op-ed in the Globe and Mail

In his new book, he argues that the same forces that attracted that creative class are now creating inequality in superstar cities such as New York, London, Paris and Toronto.

“I began to see the back-to-the-city movement as something that conferred a disproportionate share of its benefits on a small group of places and people,” he writes. “Virtually all our cities suffer from growing economic divides. Tens of millions of Americans remain locked in persistent poverty.

“Across the great majority of cities and suburbs alike, the middle class is declining. Our economic landscape is splintering into small areas of affluence and concentrated advantage, and much larger areas of poverty and concentrated disadvantage.”

The new urban crisis is leading to the rise of populism, Florida says, in the form of Brexit, Donald Trump’s presidential victory, and in Toronto's case, Rob Ford.

Read the Toronto Life Q & A

Read the Toronto Star op-ed

Undergraduate students compete at U of T this weekend to tackle affordable housing challenges

ullahnor — Fri, 10 Mar 2017 20:24:26 +0000

Undergraduate students compete at U of T this weekend to tackle affordable housing challenges

ullahnor Fri, 03/10/2017 - 15:24

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Regent Park, Canada's oldest and largest social housing development, is being revitalized with a mixture of condominiums, market-rate rental apartments and public housing (photo by the City of Toronto via Flickr)

Kim Luke

Author legacy

Kim Luke

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

The students behind CivicSpark – a ��Ƶ group devoted to fostering the next generation of city builders – will bring 13 undergraduate teams from universities across the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA) together this weekend to offer solutions to the area’s affordable housing problem.

“With the cost of housing constantly increasing, there is a real concern that people, especially marginalized and vulnerable groups can be pushed out of their homes,” said CivicSpark’s co-founder Edwin White Chacon, a fifth-year Arts & Science undergrad who is majoring in political science, and ethics, society and law.

The competition comes at a time when the ��Ƶ is exploring different housing approaches to help make the city more livable and sustainable. U of T President Meric Gertler is working with the presidents of three other GTA universities to tackle affordable housing through a call for research proposals. U of T is also looking into building laneway houses in the Huron-Sussex neighbourhood bordering the St. George campus.

U of T teams up with OCAD, York and Ryerson to seek research proposals, addressing Toronto’s affordable housing challenge

ullahnor — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 18:28:36 +0000

U of T teams up with OCAD, York and Ryerson to seek research proposals, addressing Toronto’s affordable housing challenge

ullahnor Thu, 03/02/2017 - 13:28

Cutline

U of T President Meric Gertler and the heads of three other GTA universities have joined forces to tackle affordable housing in the city (photo by Rafael Ferreira Pimentel via Flickr)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

City & Culture

urban

Cities

President Meric Gertler

Affordable Housing

Shauna Brail

Collaboration

Subheadline

Teams to submit proposals by March 24

Soaring apartment prices in the city have students like Dilan Sen making compromises and spending beyond their means to pay rent.

The fourth-year undergraduate at the ��Ƶ lives in a bachelor apartment close to the university’s downtown Toronto campus – a cramped room she shares with another person.

“I don't have my own room or privacy, and yet I pay so much,” said the urban studies and human geography double major.

Affordable housing for students like Sen is the next issue to be addressed by the presidents of four GTA universities who collaborated last year on supporting StudentMoveTO, a comprehensive survey that shed light on the long commutes students are taking daily in the GTA. The survey showed how the commute times affected course selection and extracurricular activities on campus.

Affordable Housing

U of T expands housing options for students via partnership with home-sharing platform

'Lost opportunity': Affordable housing needed in local development projects, U of T researcher says

U of T, OCAD, Ryerson, York collaborate in massive joint research project on affordable housing

Housing crisis pushing people into rural areas with already stretched health services: U of T research

Read more about the research

U of T's Richard Florida delves into inequality and rising housing prices in cities

Check the NPR interview

Read excerpts from his new book at CityLab

Read his op-ed in the Globe and Mail

Read the Toronto Life Q & A

Read the Toronto Star op-ed

Undergraduate students compete at U of T this weekend to tackle affordable housing challenges

Read more about the call for research proposals on affordable housing

Read more about laneway housing initiatives

U of T teams up with OCAD, York and Ryerson to seek research proposals, addressing Toronto’s affordable housing challenge

Read more about StudentMoveTO