When a sector changes lanes: How ONPHA gave me hope
Housing at the Heart - giving me hope for our sector-wide lane change
For 30 years, the community housing sector has been parked on the shoulder of the development highway as the private sector hurtled past. “We’ll leave it to the market,” governments said in the early 1990s, when they stopped funding programs. The market did a fine job of giving us skyscraper condos and sprawling McMansion suburban communities. The lack of affordable, secure housing in Canada, however, has reached crisis proportions.
This week, I celebrated with 1000 other community housing people at the annual conference hosted by the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association — ONPHA for short. Celebrated what you ask? Have we solved the crisis? Well, no, but it was a celebration of the beginning of merging back into that developer traffic — a collective lane-change, you might say. We’re going to build again!
I’ve attended ONPHA for most of the past 15 years. As counsel to many community housing providers, I delivered workshops on human rights or other tenant-related issues or hung out behind a table at the trade show, ready to talk up our particular brand of lawyering. It’s always been a fun but contained sort of affair attracting housing providers, bureaucrats, policy wonks, volunteer directors, and a few private sector businesses like ours that serve the sector. In recent years, excitement came in the form of petting the dogs trained to sniff out bedbugs.
This year was different though. Toronto’s Sheraton Centre buzzed with the promise of real, large-scale housing development.
Some of you may be wondering if it’s really been that bad. Well, yes. The organization where I work, the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto (CHFT), developed or acquired about 2500 units of new co-op housing in the 1980s and another 3000 in the first half of the 1990s. Then the programs were cancelled: CHFT added about 550 units in the last 30 years. An entire generation of community housing professionals — mine — has reached near-retirement without any exposure to housing development. Instead, we’ve focussed on the important and rewarding work of serving existing communities.
I rang the alarm bell on rabble.ca in January 2022, when long-time affordable housing developer, Jon Harstone, died suddenly at age 72. Although he was still working until his death, others who’d been active in the great surge of development in the ‘80s and early ‘90s had already retired or predeceased him. I worried — with Gen Xers taking a number of leadership roles, who was going to drive the development bus if we ever got funding again?
Well, that time has come — or so it looks. In 2024, the federal government launched its $1.5B Co-op Housing Development Program (CHDP); our sector has since filed applications to build several thousand units. Soon, the CHDP will be dwarfed though by the promised $13B Build Canada Homes (BCH) initiative. Ana Bailão, a former City Councillor and Deputy Mayor of Toronto and a strong housing advocate, is the CEO of BCH and chose ONPHA for her first public address. She spoke of the need to bring all the stakeholders together to make housing happen — governments, non-profits & co-ops, developers, and financial institutions. BCH will unlock programs and build capacity in the sector relying on public lands, private capital, and modern construction methods. Its priority will be shovel-ready projects, although she noted there will also be some money for pre-development supports for housing in earlier stages. The federal budget will be tabled on Tuesday and if it passes (and I’ll be part of a sector-wide breath-holding exercise on that one), BCH will release its Investment Policy Framework later in the week. Bailão promised the Expression of Interest portal will open soon after.
Toronto’s Mayor Chow spoke too. Her long-time community housing advocacy has been evident since her June 2023 election. Chow proudly noted she’s shortened approval times, reduced fees, and expanded the multi-unit residential acquisition program, a fund for non-profits and co-ops to buy private rental buildings to keep them affordable. Her closing rallying cry (other than a bunch of Blue Jay rah-rahing) was to build not just housing but hope, a commodity in short-supply during this housing crisis.
ONPHA left me with a lot of hope. Some of that came from the strong messages Olivia and Ana gave that the federal and municipal governments are behind us. But it wasn’t just that. Conference panels included many from the private sector and that’s new. A 10-year careerist from CMHC, now at RBC as its newly created Director of Housing Policy, sat on a panel aside municipal politicians, senior bureaucrats, and housing providers. Other panels included housing developers, community capital people, philanthropists, and a for-profit lawyer alongside sector stalwarts. And it wasn’t just those on stage who were drawn from outside the sector — many sported ‘first-time’ attendee badges aside lanyards showing the names of their private sector employers.
My worries prompted by Jon Harstone’s death are waning. Seems we’re merging back into development traffic surrounded by those who’ve gained private sector experience during the decades when our sector has been sidelined. It’s a win-win — we can tap into their expertise and they can stay in business despite the dried-up condo market.
Thanks, ONPHA, for an uplifting three days! (But bring back the bedbug sniffing dogs please!)
Curious about my Lane Changer series? Check out these profiles
Peter Chandler, how it all began for me
Cathy Crowe, her lane is the street
Marissa Bastidas, same lane, new direction
Pam Hudak, living on a multi-lane highway
Jennifer, crossing lanes from Phuket to pup-minderEmma Simpson, from taxiway to writing terminal
Jessica Waraich, changing lanes on the career on-ramp
Michelle Simmons, straddling two lanes in her mid-40s
Sybil Chandler (1928-2025), proud to find life’s off-ramp
Faiv Noelle, solo on a global highway
Karly Wilson, waiting aside life’s highway for the next lane
Marya Williams, when life’s lanes bring you full circle
Carolyn Whitzman, lanes inspired by mother and grandmotherValerie Groves, when the lane is bordered by perennials and pollinatorsElana Harte, Changing lanes on the “Being of Service” HighwayFaren Bogach, the fast lanes of lawyering
Cathy Mann, finding the lane to Nova ScotiaDenese Gascho, finding common ground in different lanesSafiya Randera, lanes that cross land, community, and artChristine Mounsteven, nine decades, still driving forward on life’s highway
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