Rooted in Justice, guided by our communities, building the new housing commons together!
The Housing Commons Research Centre (HCRC), is a virtual research hub based at the University of Toronto. We’re part of the New Housing Alternatives Partnership, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, we work across Canada and internationally.
At the HCRC, we focus 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 like:
- Housing Co-operatives
- Community Land Trusts
- Co-Housing and Co-Living
- Eco-villages, and rural land stewardship practices
- Encampments and Squats
- Tenant Organizing; and
- Other not-for-profit housing alternatives
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. Practically speaking the HCRC revolved around five main pillars:
- Knowledge Mobilization: We host public webinars, internal deep-dive virtual workshops, and student-led conversations that connect theory with practice.
- Collaborative Research: We support community-academic research projects that respond to real-world needs and priorities, not just thought experiments in the abstract.
- Capacity Building: We create opportunities for mentorship and skill building among emerging housing leaders, students and community based researchers.
- Resource Sharing: We’re developing a searchable archive of self-published materials, templates, policy guides, research papers, and ephemera that document the lessons learned from housing justice projects worldwide. Please contribute to our growing archive, a searchable collection of research, tools, templates, case studies and strategy guides: Submit Research.
- Theory-to-Practice Matchmaking: Through our student research portal (in development) we help to connect community groups with student researchers to co-develop 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 – welcome to the Housing Commons!
Research Areas
- Law & Governance for Community Led Housing
- Policy and Land Use Support
- Finance and Stewardship Strategy
- Housing Justice
Other NHA Research Clusters…
- Housing Precarity – Evictions & Vulnerable Housing
- Rethinking Urban Land – Decommodification & Decolonization
- Reform and Redesign – new approaches for social and supportive housing, equitable investment