Housing Policies for the 21st Century, May 2017 Symposium

Shaping Futures: Housing Policies for the 21st Century

Australia, Canada, United Kingdom

An Invitational International Symposium, Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto, 24 May 2017 

Hosted by Shaping Futures, University of Glasgow & Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto

Agenda and list of presenters

National housing systems should: (1) stimulate adequate housing production; (2) help produce a mix of housing choice (tenure, location, quality); (3) assist those who cannot afford adequate, appropriate housing. How do we improve the performance of our housing system? How can municipalities play a more significant role?

Housing is essential infrastructure. Its benefits go well beyond the social. How can we make a better case and tell the story of those whose lives are held back by insecure and/or unaffordable housing?

Presentations

Macro Trends and the Housing System, J David Hulchanski, Professor, University of Toronto

United Kingdom – Housing Policy Update, Ken Gibb, Professor, University of Glasgow

Australia – Housing Policy Update, Hal Pawson, Professor, University of New South Wales, Sudney

The Economic Case for Housing, Duncan Maclennan, Professor, University of Glasgow

The Capacity of the Affordable Housing Industry, Hal Pawson, Professor, University of New South Wales, Sydney

The Capacity of the Affordable Housing Industry, Hal Pawson, Professor, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Pressured Housing Markets, Duncan Maclennan, Professor, University of Glasgow

Communicating the Case for Housing: The Need for a New Housing Narrative, Sharon Chisholm, Shaping Futures

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Sharon Chisholm currently directs Shaping Futures: Housing Policies for the 21st Century, an international multi-sectoral knowledge exchange project based at the University of Glasgow. She managed a similar project, New Times: New Business: Housing Provision in Times of Austerity, while at the University of St Andrews. Sharon brings experience from a long career in positions in Canada with municipal governments (Ottawa & Dartmouth), community based housing groups (Access Housing), and as ED of Canada’s national housing association, Canadian Housing and Renewal Association.

Ken Gibb is a professor of housing economics at the University of Glasgow. He is Director of Policy Scotland, and co-director of What Works Scotland. Starting August 1, Ken will be Principal Investigator and Director of the Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence. This new UK centre is a consortium of nine universities and four non-academic professional bodies in a major research programme examining the UK’s housing system. The five-year program of housing research will seek to influence future housing policy at all levels.

David Hulchanski is a professor of housing and community development at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and the principal investigator of the Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership, focused on socio-spatial change in metropolitan areas given growing economic inequality. His research and teaching is focused on housing, social policy, neighbourhoods, and homelessness. He is author of the report, The Three Cities within Toronto: Income Polarization Among Toronto’s Neighbourhoods, 1970-2005, which will be updated when Census 2016 data is available.

Duncan Maclennan is an international expert on the development of cities, the renewal of neighbourhoods, and the economics of housing. He was Director of the Centre for Housing Research at the University of St Andrews. After a long career at the University of Glasgow, where he directed the Centre for Housing and Urban Research, and the Cities Programme, he worked in senior government and academic posts in both Australia and Canada. After moving to Canada in 2005 he held a joint appointment as Professor of Urban Economic Policy at the University of Ottawa and as Chief Economist at the Federal Department for Infrastructure. Duncan has advised governments on housing policy in the UK, Poland, France, Sweden, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada and Australia. He has published more than a hundred academic articles and written/edited fourteen housing related books. He is most recently the co-author of Housing and Capital in the 21st Century.

Hal Pawson is Professor of Housing Research and Policy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, the Associate Director of the City Futures Research Centre, and the director of the UNSW AHURI Research Centre. He was formerly at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University from 1995 to 2011. Hal has published widely on the governance and management of social housing, on private rental markets and on the urban geography of social disadvantage.