Best Practices for Healthy Housing Quality in Toronto is an NHS funded Solutions Lab led by the Wellesley Institute and SHS Consulting. The Lab will be looking at addressing the disrepair and deterioration of housing in older rental apartment buildings. The team will work with tenants, apartment owners and managers, city staff and other stakeholders to find solutions to this problem.
Key Findings / Key Goals
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Identify and understand programs developed by other cities to address housing repair.
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Spark productive discussions to identify best practices to ensure good repair and housing quality.
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Detect shortfalls in Toronto’s approach to apartment disrepair and design desirable and doable ways to improve.
Project scope and expected outcomes
How will the lab be conducted?
Wellesley Institute and SHS Consulting will use a five-phase Solutions Lab co-design process. Here are the steps:
- The Definition Phase will set up the team, process and expectations for a successful co-design process. A Partner Advisory Committee will be formed and will include people from all main partners in the lab.
- The Discovery Phase will develop a deeper understanding of the current issues, roles and systems in and outside of Toronto. A Problem Framing workshop will bring together experts and key people to confirm the things stated in the problem.
- The Co-Development Phase will create a space for a range of stakeholders to develop ideas in a creative, inclusive way. This phase has two workshops. One will help narrow in on types of solutions that may emerge. The other will focus on thinking critically about the impacts of proposed solutions as well as implementation angles. The goal of this phase is to arrive at a preferred and feasible set of policy and program options.
- The Prototype and Testing phase will create a space to test and assess what is promising and can be put in place. The responses or solutions will be chosen based on what was learned in the Discovery and Co-Development phases.
- The Roadmap, as the final phase, will include steps to implement the solutions after the project winds up.
Project Team: Wellesley Institute
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Partners:
SHS Consulting
City of Toronto — Municipal Licensing and Standards Division (ML&S)
Toronto Public Health (TPH)
Erica Phipps, Principal Investigator, RentSafe
Greater Toronto Apartment Association (GTAA)
Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations (FMTA)
J.D Hulchanski, Principal Investigator, Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership (NCRP)
ACORN Toronto (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)
Get More Information:
Email: Innovation-Research@cmhc.ca or visit the National Housing Strategy’s Innovation page.
Search our Housing Knowledge Centre for important updates on the progress of this lab.