New Housing Alternatives partners with communities across Canada to tackle housing challenges through research and community-led solutions.
Explore our Vision & Objectives and Research Clusters & Projects below.
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Vision Statement & High Level Research Objectives
New Housing Alternatives (NHA), launched in 2024, is a Research Partnership that will examine the problems with Canada’s current housing system and identify ways to transform this system through an exploration of housing alternatives.
Through the collaborative research of academic and community partners, NHA aims to propose a new housing system that promotes social equity and justice and will deeply support individuals with lived experiences of housing precarity in Canada.
NHA brings together a diverse interdisciplinary team of academic researchers, housing agencies, and community organizations to identify new housing policies and alternative housing arrangements for Canadian cities.
Our overarching goal is to conduct policy and community-relevant research to help transform Canada’s housing system into affordable, equitable, collaborative, grounded in human rights, provides natural choice, and honours and promotes Indigenous people’s land rights.
This requires a comprehensive and holistic approach to understanding housing precarities, community-led housing alternatives, housing policy, and a transformative research agenda that examines multiple alternatives to current housing models.
We have four high-level, over-arching research questions:
- How can we decommodify Canada’s housing system?
- How can we desegregate Canada’s housing system?
- How can we de-financialize Canada’s housing system?
- How can we decolonize Canada’s housing system?
Land Acknowledgement Statement
Research Clusters & Projects
The NHA partnership involves four self-organizing research clusters which will pursue core multi-year pan-Canadian research projects, as well as more localized shorter research projects focussed on key research questions. Research projects will be updated with new additions to each cluster.
Housing Precarity
- Countering rising rental costs and evictions
- Housing pressure on vulnerable populations
- Tenants’ rights mapping and national research network
Alternative Housing Arrangements
- Building on alternative housing models
- Policy and support for community-led housing
- Collaborating on research and housing initiatives
Reform & Redesign of Housing Policy, Governance, & Process
- Redesigning housing policies for equity and inclusion
- Innovative models for social and supportive housing
- Equitable and responsible investment in real estate
Rethinking Urban Land
- Honouring indigenous land rights in urban planning
- Land-back movements and decolonizing urban spaces
- Leveraging state land for inclusive housing
