With 4.4 million Canadian households living in core housing need, governments, non-profits and community providers cannot address the housing crisis alone. Now, an innovative new model promises to bring “socially inspired capital” to support greater investment in affordable housing.
“People are slipping into housing precarity – one unexpected bill or rent increase away from losing their home,” says Jolene Livingston, chief executive officer of Partners for Affordable Housing, a non-profit organization with a charitable arm that she founded two years ago to address the issue. “Communities are ready with solutions, but the capital required to put them into action isn’t flowing fast enough.”
The foundation, headquartered in Calgary, acts as a connector, convener and force multiplier for philanthropists, corporations and social-impact investors interested in supporting these initiatives. It will make its first grants in the new year.
Ms. Livingston saw the need to address the housing crisis with a father who died at 89 “in fear of outliving his finances,” given the high cost of rent. “We’re all one degree of separation away from somebody who has been in housing precarity.”
A career fundraiser, she noticed that major charitable foundations in fields such as health care, education and social services had a national presence, running awareness campaigns, and local offices supporting programming on the ground.
“Nothing existed at the same level and scale to address the affordable housing crisis,” she recalls. “Organizations providing housing solutions don’t have capital to meet their needs.”
It’s an equity gap that Mitchell Cohen knows well. With a history in the co-operative housing sector and as CEO of The Daniels Corporation, a private-sector real estate development company in Toronto, he sees the opportunity for change.