Affordable Housing Challenge Project:

In recent years, as affordable housing has become an increasingly significant issue in urban centers around the world, community land trusts (CLTs) have emerged as a vital model and method for provisioning affordable housing by removing the property from the speculative market.

CLTs also have an important role to play in raising public awareness about the impacts of gentrification, affordable housing, displacement, and eviction, and linking these phenomena to anti-racist, anti-oppression, and settler colonialist frameworks.

The Affordable Housing Challenge Project (AHCP), an initiative of the School of Cities, is answering the call for more affordable housing in Canadian cities by investigating and supporting the growth of CLTs in Toronto. The AHCP is a collective that brings together scholars from across disciplines and campuses at the University of Toronto. Under the supervision of AHCP project leads Susannah Bunce (Human Geography, UTSC), an international expert on CLTs, and Alan Walks (Geography, Geomatics and Environment, UTM), an international expert on the financialization of housing and housing policy, the AHCP collective explores issues related to housing affordability with the goal of working collaboratively to discuss and research the causes, processes, policies, and consequences of declining housing affordability.

“Our vision is of a city in which housing is seen as a human right. One that makes us all better for it, one that we protect because it is the right thing to do. Our vision is of a city in which housing is a key ingredient in making people feel like they belong. You – we – all belong here.”
-Affordable Housing Challenge Project website affordablehousingchallenge.ca/about/

The AHCP network undertakes a wide range of activities to push forward its affordable housing research and advocacy goals. The AHCP’s Affordable Housing Seminar Series has hosted eleven events since 2019 on topics such as housing financialization, alternative housing models, and the eviction crisis. The AHCP also supports two research clusters. The first is the Faculty and Students Research Cluster, a community of interdisciplinary U of T scholars and graduate students focused on exploring a range of issues related to Toronto’s affordable housing crisis; the second is an NGO Research Cluster, dedicated to raising awareness of Toronto’s affordable housing shortage and advocating for housing policy reform.

Importantly, the AHCP team also offers outreach and advocacy support to organizations that are working to expand access to affordable housing and has been at the forefront of community initiatives to advocate for and build alternative housing solutions in Toronto, particularly the Community Land Trust (CLT) model.

A community land trust, or CLT, is both a model and a method for the community-based stewardship and ownership of land. A CLT is a non-profit or non-governmental organization that acquires land in trust for a community. CLTs can differ in structure, but they generally focus on the acquisition of donated or purchased land within a defined geographical area and with an emphasis on social justice.

The goal of a CLT is to hold land in perpetuity, and legal restrictions are placed on the resale of CLT-owned land and/or the buildings on the land to prohibit profit-making from resale. The legal restrictions that CLTs create in the form of a ground lease separate the land title, which is held by the CLT, from the building or housing title with the intention of lowering the cost of housing. Ideally, holding land in a CLT can lead to the commodification of both land and housing stock. Any buildings within the CLT can be owned or rented by individuals or families, and caps on rental increases can provide deep rental affordability for tenants.

CLTs work collaboratively with local community residents, who may or may not be members of the CLT organization, to identify uses for the land. Often the use of CLT land is geared towards affordable housing provision. However, CLTs can also include uses like social enterprises and community gardens.