Our team and partners: Connecting across Canada

Team Partners:
Local National and provincial Academic profiles Universities

Co-directors

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Susannah Bunce

NHA Co-Director; Co-Lead, Research Cluster 2; Member, Leadership Committee

Dr. Susannah (Sue) Bunce is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough and a graduate member of the Department of Geography & Planning, University of Toronto.

Susannah’s research centres on the geographies and planning of urban communities and neighbourhoods and sustainable community building. She is interested in sustainable communities and strategies for socio-environmental justice at the urban neighbourhood scale. Susannah engages with critical theories of urban commons and alternities, gentrification, environmental justice, urban political ecology, and more-than-human geographies to examine localized issues and politics of land use and community-based socio-environmental identifications with local spaces. She is interested in community-led resistance to gentrification and other housing/land-based struggles. Her research also focuses on insurgent responses and more hopeful, future-oriented community-engaged practices, particularly those related to affordable and equitable land stewardship such as urban community land trusts, co-operatives and eco-villages.

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Alan Walks

NHA Co-Director; Member, Leadership Committee

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Dr. Alan Walks is a professor of urban planning and geography in the Department of Geography, Geomatics and Environment at the University of Toronto – Mississauga. His research is concerned with understanding the causes and consequences of urban socio-spatial inequality in the cities of the developed world, particularly those in Canada. His research has been published in many scholarly articles and books. One of Alan’s current primary research foci is the financialization of owner-occupied housing, and the relationship between rising household debt, real estate speculation, and growing inequalities in household wealth in Canada’s cities. Alan’s research has also examined gentrification, the social and political implications of neighbourhood change, deindustrialization and occupational change, gated communities, condoism and tenure change, transport-based inequalities, and socio-economic and racial segregation in Canadian cities.

Alan is thrilled to be working with so many great people and organizations in this partnership, and is looking forward to helping transform, through our collective efforts, Canada’s housing system into one that is truly equitable and affordable.

Project coordinator

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Bharat Punjabi

Project Coordinator

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Outreach Coordinator & Senior Researcher

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Jeremy Withers

Outreach Coordinator

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Jeremy is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography & Planning at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the role of public policies in facilitating and contesting the financialization and investor ownership of housing. He also focuses on local governments’ use of housing and planning policies to protect and expand access to affordable housing. Jeremy’s recent outreach work includes mobilizing and supporting progressive groups in campaigns for Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) and a vacant home tax in the City of Toronto. He previously worked as the Research and Outreach Coordinator for the Affordable Housing Challenge Project at the U of T’s School of Cities and is NHA’s new Outreach Coordinator and Senior Researcher.

Executive

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Godwin Arku

Chair, NHA Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility (EDIA) Committee; Member, Leadership Committee

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Heather Dorries

Co-Chair, NHA Research Cluster 4: Rethinking Urban Land

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Heather McLean

AP Co-Chair, Knowledge Mobilization Committee

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Heather McLean (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Human Geography and Environmental Studies. With a background in housing research at Shelter Housing and Support for the City of Toronto, she has collaborated in a range of grassroots arts initiatives addressing urban inequalities. Her research focuses on the interconnected crises of climate change and housing, investigating how arts interventions and mutual aid shape everyday geographies.

Grounded in feminist, queer, anti-colonial, arts-based, and participatory methodologies, Heather collaborates with women and 2SLGBTQI+ artists and community organizations to co-develop research and creative projects that tackle these pressing issues. Her diverse artistic contributions include performance projects with the Dirty Plotz cabaret (Toronto), the Workers’ Theatre, the People’s Bank of Govanhill Arts Collective, and the Glasgow School of Art (Glasgow, Scotland), as well as the Western Canada Theatre Company (Kamloops) and Vancouver’s rEvolver Festival of performance.

Heather is also an active member of the Community Economies Research Network, a global collective of artists, scholars, and practitioners dedicated to fostering thought and practices that enable communities to thrive together.

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Maggie Low

Co-Lead, Research Cluster 4; Member, Leadership Committee

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Maggie Low is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in the School of Community and Regional Planning. She is the Co-Chair of the Indigenous Community Planning (ICP) concentration. Maggie is of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry and a Wikwemikoong Unceded Territory status member. Maggie is a community-engaged scholar who seeks to advance the work of Indigenous sovereignty at the Nation and community levels, specifically through planning and negotiated agreements.

Her current research and teaching focus on Indigenous planning, Indigenous community land trusts, Indigenous-state relations and reconciliation efforts in Canadian cities.

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Julie Mah

Co-Lead, Research Cluster 1; Member, Leadership Committee

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Julie Mah is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Geography (City Studies Program) at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Julie’s research engages with questions of housing justice. As such, she examines issues of housing affordability, gentrification and evictions, displacement (spatial and non-spatial forms), and the planning mechanisms that can be employed to address spatialized inequities. Her work has appeared in Housing Policy Debate, Environment and Planning A and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

Currently, Julie’s research investigates (1) evictions and Above Guideline Rent Increases (AGIs) in Ontario, (2) the effects of landlord-tenant policy regimes on rental affordability and tenant displacement, and (3) the effectiveness of value capture tools in generating new affordable housing.

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Nat Pace

Co-Lead, Research Cluster 2; Member, Leadership Committee, NHA Project

Nat Pace is Network Director of the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts. Previously, Nat worked with the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, building members’ capacity for the delivery of trauma-informed gender-responsive housing programs and services for criminalized women and gender-diverse people. They also served as an advisory circle member for the 2022 Pan-Canadian Voice on Women’s Housing Symposium. Nat holds a Master of Planning from McGill University and a BA in Geography and Cultural Studies from Wilfrid Laurier University.

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Ren Thomas

Co-Lead, Research Cluster 3; Member, Leadership Committee

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Ren Thomas is an Associate Professor at the School of Planning at Dalhousie University and a research consultant with clients such as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Infrastructure Canada, and the BC Non-Profit Housing Association. She serves on the board of directors for the Community Housing Transformation Centre (2023-26) and co-chaired the Nova Scotia Affordable Housing Commission (2020-21).

Recent Publications:

Olsson, L. and Thomas, R. (2024). Mobility justice or transit boosterism? The use of rail transit as an urban transformation strategy in Kitchener, Canada and Malmö, Sweden. Mobilities.

Thomas, R. (2023). Let’s stop calling it a housing crisis. Policy Options (part of How does Canada fix the housing crisis? series), November 14, 2023.

Thomas, R., Blackmore, H., and Gahagan, J. (2023). Identifying barriers associated with LGBT seniors’ housing: opportunities moving forward in the Canadian context. Canadian Planning and Policy 2023: 84-109.

Thomas, R. (2023). Protecting Affordable Housing in Transit-Served Areas. Plan Canada 63(3): 34-37.

Thomas, R. (2022). Tipping Points. In: Maggino, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Cham.

Thomas, R. (2022). Housing as a collective investment versus a means to individual wealth. Planning Theory and Practice.

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Ricardo Tranjan

Co-Lead, Research Cluster 3; Member, Leadership Committee

Ricardo Tranjan, Ph.D., is a senior housing and social policy researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). He is the author of two books: Participatory Democracy in Brazil (2015), a scholarly analysis of his native country, and the national bestseller The Tenant Class (2023). Previously, Ricardo led the City of Toronto’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Office and taught briefly at universities in Ontario and Québec. A frequent media commentator in both English and French, he resides in Ottawa.

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David Wachsmuth

Chair, NHA Data Management Committee; Member, Leadership Committee

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David Wachsmuth is the Canada Research Chair in Urban Governance at McGill University and is also an Associate Professor in the School of Urban Planning. He directs UPGo, the Urban Politics and Governance research group at McGill, where he leads a team of researchers investigating pressing urban governance problems related to economic development, environmental sustainability, and housing markets. David co-founded Curbcut, an award-winning online platform for deep, dynamic, and intuitive exploration of urban sustainability in Canadian regions. He is one of the world’s leading experts on the impacts of short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb on cities worldwide. He consults widely with municipalities and community organizations on designing appropriate regulations. Dr. Wachsmuth has published widely in top journals in urban studies, planning and geography, and his work has been covered extensively in the national and international media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, and the Washington Post.

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Margaret Flynn

Co-Lead, Research Cluster 1; Member, Leadership Committee

Margaret Flynn, Director of Policy, Research & Law Reform at Canadian Centre for Housing Rights

Margaret is a lawyer with expertise in human rights and housing law, called to the Ontario bar in 2006. She has appeared at all levels of court in Ontario, and has prepared major research reports, led public interest inquiries, and engaged in negotiation and mediation to advance human rights in housing.

Margaret is also an Ontario-certified teacher, and routinely relies on her skills as an educator to deliver public legal education sessions to a wide range of audiences on housing rights.

Margaret holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and a Bachelor of Education from Queen’s University and a Juris Doctor from the University of Toronto.