Rooted in justice, guided by our communities, building the new housing commons together!
ABOUT THE HOUSING COMMONS
At the Housing Commons Research Centre, our work focuses on community-led housing – housing that is shaped, stewarded, and sustained by and for communities – not for profit. We support research, organizing, and knowledge-sharing around alternative housing approaches such as:
Housing Co-operatives
Member-owned and democratically run, housing co-ops offer stable, affordable homes where residents collectively manage and maintain their community.
Community Land Trusts
CLTs are community-based nonprofits that acquire housing and land to hold under community stewardship, preserving affordability and preventing displacement for generations.
Co-Housing and Co-Living
Co-housing and co-living models emphasize shared space and communal living, where residents maintain private units, but collaborate on common areas, meals, and decisions about their shared community.
Eco-villages, and rural land stewardship practices
Eco-villages and land stewardship projects focus on sustainable living through shared governance, ecological design, food production, and care for the land.
Encampments and Squats
Encampments and squats are grassroots shelter and resistance where unhoused people claim space, build solidarity, and assert their right to housing.
Tenant Organizing
Tenant organizing builds collective power among renters to improve conditions, resist displacement, and influence policy through shared action.
Other not for profit and non-market housing alternatives
Alternative housing models, from supportive housing to mutual aid networks and Indigenous land protectors, prioritize community, affordability, and ecology
All of these longstanding and evolving practices reveal the resilience of community-led housing movements. Through research and collaboration, the HCRC seeks to document, support and expand the reach of these transformative models.
We call this ecosystem the Housing Commons because it builds on shared values of care, justice, and collective ownership.
Our work is grounded in equity, accessibility, and anti-racism, with a strong focus on uplifting the knowledge and leadership of historically marginalized communities, including Indigenous, Black, 2SLGBTQIA+, disabled, unhoused, and underhoused people.
What We Do
We’re not just building a website, we’re building a community of practice, one that knows housing justice requires imagination, collaboration and deep accountability. In practice, the HCRC revolves around five main pillars:
We create opportunities for mentorship and capacity building amongst emerging housing leaders, students, and community-based researchers.
We are developing a searchable archive of academic and community-published materials, including templates, policy papers, guides, research papers, and ephemera, that document housing commons initiatives worldwide.
Through our student research portal (in development / coming soon), we help to connect community groups with student researchers to co-create impactful housing studies and solutions.
If you’re organizing housing alternatives, studying the housing crisis, building new models or just starting to ask these sorts of questions about your own neighbourhood and community – welcome to the Housing Commons Research Centre!