McMaster gets $1.1M to study affordable housing

Canada lags behind Europe and the U.S. in such research, says professor leading collaborative

“Affordable housing” might seem an oxymoron in this pandemic-influenced era of skyrocketing real estate prices.

Jim Dunn suggests it’s all the more reason to better study what can be done to address the issue locally, and across Canada.

The housing research guru heads McMaster University’s Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC), in the social sciences faculty, that received $1.1 million Monday from the federal government toward its research.

“We are really excited about (the new funding)” said Dunn. “We have a major crisis in housing in Canada, and don’t have a lot of research capacity.”

In contrast, research on affordable housing by government-funded agencies in Europe, Australia and the U.S. has long been ahead of Canada’s efforts, he said, even as the federal government announced a 10year, $40-billion National Housing Strategy in 2017.

“I’ve studied housing 20-plus years, but I have to go to Europe to get at what’s in the forefront of research in my area,” he said. “The U.K. alone has a half-dozen centres for study into housing.”

He said part of the reason is that Canada has a lower percentage of public sector supported housing than in the U.K., for example, while in the U.S., its Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is a powerful federal agency.

Dunn’s CHEC is at the hub of the broader Canada-wide Collaborative Housing Research Network. He said the new funding will help them develop a “robust research ecosystem,” in part by attracting masters and PhD students to study housing issues, and creating a course on housing policy accessible across Canada.

CHEC’s research addresses issues ranging from housing for Indigenous communities to the impact of domestic violence on accessible and safe housing, and understanding the impact of interest rates on the cost of renting or buying a home.

He said that in Hamilton, city officials require stronger research to identify local affordable housing needs, and to develop an index to track where it is available in the private market, not only from non-profit sources.

In the big picture, he suggested, publicly funded research can go a long way toward understanding and addressing the crisis, rather than simply spending to erect more buildings.

“The ROI (return on investment) with research is pretty high.”