Innovation in Action: Rethinking Supportive Housing

[Music] Hello and welcome to Community Chats. Today I have a conversation with Alex Shannon and Julie Summerfroind and we dive into an interesting approach that is being tested for housing that leverages the capacity of some families as well as the growing interest in land trusts that begin to address the crisis that we're seeing in housing and the opportunity to look at some housing as more than just a commodity but as an important part of life for people and communities. There's a lot going on right now in the area of housing, especially affordable housing and the need to address the significant shortfalls that we're seeing. This issue is even more of a crisis for individuals with an intellectual disability who require support in addition to housing. With almost 30,000 people in Ontario waiting for a place to live at some point in the future, there is an urgency and an opportunity for housing providers, advocates, and support organizations as well as families to consider what the future looks like. A big part of our conversation focus on a solutions lab project that both Alex and Julie are working on that is a collaborative initiative under the National Housing Strategy and it brings different partners, perspectives, and ways of thinking to the table. We explored what matters to make this approach different, the gaps it's trying to address, and how working together across sectors can lead to new possibilities. We had a great chat, I learned a lot about rethinking housing, challenging some assumptions, and taking collective responsibility for building communities that people can live in with dignity and belonging. Lots going on in housing these days across the country and Toronto's certainly new exception, no exception, with lots of innovative things happening, lots of different things are coming our way. And then a lot of people are looking at different innovative ways of providing housing and as we know in the developmental services field, there's about 29,000, 30,000 people waiting for a place to live. So huge demand and innovation is one of the ways that we're going to get at that. So today I'm really pleased to be joined by Alex and Julie, who are going to talk about the solutions lab project that they undertook around a really innovative way that might be applicable for some families around use of family home and providing people with a place to live and some other things. So we're going to jump right in here. Alex, Julie, welcome. Thanks. Thanks. Now Alex, I should clarify, I called you Alex, is it Alex or Alexandra, which, which do you prefer Alex is good? Alex is good. All right. Just to get stuff off, I know you've both got a lot of background and history in housing and in the developmental services sector. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about, you know, your backgrounds and how you ended up in this sector and why why you stay in that. Julie, maybe I'll start with you. Sure. Great to be here, Brad, a little bit about me. So I'm currently the principal of innovation at a company called SHS. We're an affordable housing consultancy and we do development policy as well as innovation. And so I'm in the innovation group and I come to housing via public health. I worked at Toronto Public Health for about five years and then I also worked in doing innovation and design projects in a number of public services before kind of focusing in on housing. And I'd say the reason I'm really interested in investing my time here is that housing is one of the biggest drivers of this is social determinants of health. And I really think that I want to be a part of things that make tangible impact and you don't get much more tangible than housing in terms of making things real in this world. So that's a little bit about me. Absolutely. That's that's true. Thank you. Alex, what what about you? What's what's your journey? Well, so I have worked at I've worked at developmental service Ontario since 2015. I've been the housing navigator with developmental services at Ontario Toronto since 2018 when the role was created. But I kind of when I was a teenager, I was very lucky to have a job in a daycare and I got to work alongside a young boy and his sort of primary worker. And you know, I've always kind of been drawn to helping like being in contributing in ways that are hopefully are helpful. And hopefully hopefully helpful. And watching this primary care worker, the bond that she and this young boy had built together and watching the way that she was able to kind of adapt the environment and very subtly give cues to the rest of us, the other, the other children within the program and the other staff within the program to really foster an environment where this young boy was actively kind of engaged with the different activities that we were undertaking. That's kind of where I got my first sort of taste of things and then studied social work and did my final practicum at an organization that serves children, you've been adults on the autism spectrum and haven't looked at since. Despite many challenges that we we we face every day, I think in a way that only makes me more kind of passionate and determined to try to do that. To try to make a positive difference to be a part of the positive difference, hopefully. Now that's excellent. It's so many people that work in our sector or you know come to it because of some of an experience they had as a teenager, a job, a neighbor, somebody I had a similar experience that a camp I worked at and one of one of our campers missed the bus and ended up sort of sleeping in my dorm with these sort of I was a counselor. And you know I won't say that was what got me here, but it was certainly an early introduction to understanding what people's needs were and I got to meet his parents and sort of understand and those things could sort of carry on lifelong. I think it's sometimes something we forget in our in our work is that teenagers kids have a lot to offer and they have a lot to learn from the from the early sort of involvement with with people. Although part of it to his generational like my kids finish school and there was lots of people the integrated classrooms it was different than when I was going to school so it's much worth a lot to remember there. So Julie I started out by saying that there's a lot of innovation, a lot of cool things that are happening and housing across the country, particularly in Toronto and as well in developmental services. Is that right am I right or am I am I off base? I mean I'll share my perspective and I think Alex I'd love to hear yours and I think there's a lot of hopeful innovation work that's happening and different a lot of it we're seeing is through different configurations of organizations working together. So whether it be new partnerships between private developers and public community housing providers or it's like with our project where we're looking at how can community land trust this new kind of emergent actor in the system can really start to make a difference for communities. So I think there's a lot of interesting things that are coming out we've also seen more and more as your work demonstrates the combination of housing and health or housing and a medical facility or looking at things that are cross crossing domains that used to be so siloed that I think are really interesting and compelling to see. But there's probably a lot still more breasted to it yeah for sure yeah not to imply that there's not more work to be done but it is nice to see because for so many years there was simply nothing. Nothing nothing new nothing affordable no co-ops like it was just what we had was what we had it's nice to see some movement in this area and just one one more sort of follow up there before we sort of get into your particular project is you talked about housing being one of the key indicators in terms of social determinants. So what do you mean by that right so when I was working at in public health and probably for many folks listening are familiar with the social determinants health so it's about 11 determines that impact and in visuals health outcomes so it can be the built environment where we live it can be social inclusion the well being of of the community or part of it also includes things like access to good healthy food. It also is connected to your income and and job levels and so when we look at health outcomes there is a long time where people would think just about it from a medical point of view you had some sort of illness and then you had a treatment and the public health model is thinking about the prevention and of course there's some really good work being done around how do we increase the improvements on those broader terms of health. And so housing is a big big indicator of whether not somebody is able to have a healthy outcome because of course it connects to the stability that they have their sense of self self belonging and also having the stability to go out in the world and do something you know whether that be just being able to go visit friends or connect with family. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's much easier if you have a stable home environment. So it doesn't just change your living arrangement, but it also obviously has an impact on your overall health. >> Yeah, that's so true. So at Community Living Toronto, we've done a lot of vertically inclusive communities, right? We're the tent of new builds where we're able to get a number of units and support people. We all look at statistics and you can see the importance of housing in a person's overall health and all that. But what's been really cool in the last number of years since we started this, is to actually see those numbers translate into a person's how happy they are, how well they feel, how involved they are with friends. And it's not even just having housing, it's having the right housing that's purpose built in a community. It's not some lousy rental in a sketchy part neighborhood that it's housing where they can really feel belong. So it's really neat to see the impacts that are there. So you guys have started a project, run this project over the last little bit. And that's what really what we want to get into. And this was funded through a solutions lab grant as I understand. So Alex, maybe you can talk about what is a solutions lab grant, if that's what indeed it is. And what was your idea for this project? Yeah, so a solutions lab is one of the programs under the National Housing Strategy. So Canon Mortgage and Housing Corporation funds the solutions labs initiative. And essentially it is a program that provides, so applicants will put together a proposal with an idea for how to help address or create a solution for a really challenging housing issue, affordable housing issue. And so over the years as housing navigator, so this project is myself and two of my housing navigator colleagues. So there's 10 housing navigators across the province of Ontario. And myself and two of my colleagues from the Eastern region and the F out East region kind of we're working together, are working together. So you partnered with Extenda Family in Kingston, Surrey Place, and then Service Coordination Support, which is in the Eastern region. That's right, absolutely. Yeah, so we have been having conversations with families over the years who will come to us and say, I have a home. I'd like to donate my home to a developmental service agency. And in return for that, I would like for my loved one to be able to remain in that home and to receive the support that they need. And perhaps that other people could be also supported within that home. And I think that there are scenarios where that kind of model has been explored over the years in the current climate. That conversation doesn't tend to kind of go very far. We're not seeing a lot of families and agencies being able to come together and make that happen. And then another piece of it is that we've been working over the years as Julie mentioned, you know, can be the land trust or emergency or cross Ontario. We're seeing the number of land trust kind of grow across Canada, sorry. And we've been working with some community land trust and talking to them about the challenges that they face with either acquiring their first property or building the number of properties that they have in their portfolio. And so we kind of have this idea of is there a way to come up with kind of a win-win solution where we could create a model and create some tools that would really support families and being able to maybe transfer a property that they own either donation or selling the property some sort of an arrangement and then being able to turn that property, so selling it to a land trust, for example. And then being able to use that property done to support adults with developmental disabilities within the home and create the agreements that would be required in order to ensure that they have the support that they need for that to be viable. And of course, everybody wants to see all of those pieces come together. As far as, you know, families want to know that they have the peace of mind of knowing that their loved one will be able to live kind of hopefully long term within the home and have access to the support. The community land trust, who is kind of receiving that property and is then going to kind of steward that property into the future also wants to know that, you know, the residents of the home have what they need for this to be a solution that works, a scenario that works. So we've certainly had those conversations with families. It doesn't work for everybody, but for some people they see it as a really good idea. And we've, to your point, we've never been able to kind of find a way to make it work. The expectation that support be provided lifelong because of a house, those two things are different. Right? And one of the challenges that we have in Ontario is that housing supply is not matched with the support that makes the housing viable. So we haven't connected those things. So I'm glad to see that you tackled this project. Julie, in terms of those criteria around the land trust, talk about how you sort of start to think about the problem solving of that or what were some of the key things that you were trying to address in this project. Yeah, for sure. And one thing for your listeners to know is that this project is in in flight right now. So we are about halfway through and we're at the really juicy stage where we're actually starting to try to solve these some of these problems. And so one of the things that the community land trust have been talking to us about has been thinking about being really transparent with families to help them understand what the implications are for the land trust if they were to take on a property. You know, I think there's a lot of folks as we're just starting to navigate like I have this house. I know a little bit about how to buy a house. I know a little bit about how to sell a house. But what does that mean when a community land trust is trying to acquire it and community land trust think about things like what are I going to have to invest in this property to maintain it over the years. Are there going to be changes to the to the makeup of the house? Are we going to have to, you know, over time make it more accessible and sort of the upkeep and maintenance costs. And so, you know, community land trust are literally communities coming together to steward and protect land and keep it affordable and in their communities and create this long term outcome. And so when we're talking with the two different groups, it's really about trying to figure out what's a reasonable expectation has been a big part of the journey that we're on with folks. And part of that we'll be looking at how do we create some readiness tools for families to assess their property for themselves before they even talk to a land trust. I'm here. I suspect Brad and your situations where it didn't work. The location might not have been great or the makeup of the home didn't make sense or as you said the math didn't math in terms of expectations. So donations to an organization of charity need to be unencumbered. So you can't it's not really a donation when people say. Here's I'll give you this if you do this right and especially when there's a direct personal benefit to a fan and we get it where people are coming from but we've just got to be careful around how you how you navigate that. And I think there's been some interesting models that people are looking at as like market level sale or reduced sale and then you're in now you're in a different contractual arrangement right where you can look at different levers and different things that can be committed versus a straight donation. Because especially as you mentioned to even access the donation benefits you have to meet what a donation is exactly exactly so Alex have you seen so this has been a question out there has been a lot of no repair and sort of think of this is a good solution and it is or can be. Are you aware of situations where it has worked and others jurisdictions or what what have you learned about where this where this has has worked has worked well. So I mean we've heard about more anecdotally so about scenario where this has happened in and I would say I'm not aware of any kind of a transaction that has happened in recent years so this is going back a little bit. We've also spoken to you know some agencies who have more recently engaged families seriously engage and really kind of invested quite a lot of time and financial resources in you know trying to bring a deal like this to fruition. But you know haven't been successful and certainly there are things that you know we've been able to learn from from conversations with with those players. But I think also, you know, we're sort of, part of it is that there is the option of potentially there being like a donation, but we're also sort of exploring what other sort of transactions might actually be feasible to support this kind of an arrangement. Another thing that's come up through the conversations that we've been having with people, another idea is, you know, what if it isn't the transfer of a property from a family to a community land trust? What if there is an opportunity to invest in some way in, you know, a project with a community land trust, whether it is some sort of a vertical community and it's an investment in, you know, that development with, you know, an agreement to be able to occupy a suite. And then we're going to occupy a suite in the building or, you know, adding density, like building a garden suite or something like that. And so I think there's a lot of different possibilities. And as, you know, Julie said, we're kind of at the media, the media point of the project where we're really now trying to hone in on, like some of those details and creating the tools that could support the conversations that would need to happen in order for a model like this to. So, so and I appreciate the fact you're at the halfway point you've done a lot of research. You're now sort of looking at what to do next. So practically or concretely, what are some of the things that you're, that you're looking at that you're kind of most hopeful for. Now again, won't hold you to it, recognize that you've still got work to do. But what are the kind of things? So if we're if you're a parent or sibling with a home and you're thinking about this, what are some of the things that that you are most excited about from the work that you've, you've done and Julie, maybe you can start an Alex, you can go next. Sure. So in the last month or so, we got the chance to interview some families who've created some variations of this solution sort of before even community land trust came to be. And so one of the really interesting pattern we spoke to some families was about how they first tried it out in their own home. Having a couple of different people, mental disabilities living in the home, but then also having what they call supportive roommates. And so this was people who would come and live in the home, they would pay rent, but I did reduce rate so that they could be there overnight. And the parent could kind of move out of the house so that some of the. There's a number of these models in British Columbia as well. There's a number of models like this in British Columbia that that we've seen where people are living for reduced rent or rent free. And there's hours of expectation where they're in the home. And then hours where they can go to school or go to work or whatever. So that yeah, that's that's interesting. Yeah, so when we could what makes us excited about that is to your point around like the cost of care that's it's a big part of the the equation is that if we start to think about these opportunities with the community land trust, where they're able to bring down the cost of overnight. For example, that maybe the the investment or the housing asset that the family has can go further in terms of what it's contributing back. We've also spoken to some families who they kind of say, you know what I'm not interested in generational wealth. I do want to create the space to be in perpetuity. And now that a land trust exists, I have a new partner that I could go to. Maybe they have a home right now. It is supportive living and they're thinking, OK, if I can create my financial model to match the needs of my my loved one and then bringing the land trust into this conversation. They're much more prepared to figure out the solution together. And so one of the things that we are talking about creating is investing in helping people do and understand some of this longer term financial planning so that there's a recognition that this isn't a one year process to get you into solution. We can help people start this process much earlier. OK, great Alex. What do you what what's bringing your hope or what what are you seeing that you think is really your optimistic about? I think one is a really kind of interesting and neat things about the project is has been the ability to bring together. You know representatives from community land trust from developmental service agencies and caregivers and and some of the caregivers that we are engaging with as well kind of straddle more than one of those roles. And seeing the conversations that are happening I mean right like we kind of touched on earlier some of the innovation some of the projects that we're seeing. You know there is an increased focus on increasing affordable housing stock. But these conversations it's it's rare for these conversations to actually involve caregivers and to really be looking at the the element of you know this is certainly not you know a representation of everyone in in our sector. But there are folks out there who do have resources that they can and are very eager to leverage. And I think that it's really exciting to be having conversations in you know careful ways as well because to your point bread earlier when you were talking about you know the complexities of you know a person is donating a home and then their loved one is is you know benefiting from that. And not sort of advocating for like a two tiered solution but how can we bring you know people to the table and make sure that we are. You know exploring any. Yeah no hands on deck. Two tiered is sort of loaded because in certainly in Canada that idea oriental for sure a two tiered system is seen as like a third rail we don't want that in health care. But developmental services not in health care and with 30,000 people waiting for places to live. And again it doesn't mean tomorrow 30,000 people need a place to live but over the next there's a tsunami of of of of need coming and the system currently accommodates 15 16,000 people my members right be wrong but it's about that. Unless we're looking at a bunch of different ways to leverage resource and do new things and partner. I I I struggle to see how we'll meet the challenge that's coming in coming years. And I might just add like what's interesting and why the community land trust is so so kind of excited for this why is it interesting for them is a lot of these land trusts are just starting their journeys as well they're just in the process of acquiring their first properties or maybe they have one or two and they're looking for creative ways in different modes of. Yeah, I was saying that they can create with the we so community land trust seems to be one of the pillars that you look at as a way to do this what what's an example of a thriving or or community land trust or one that that maybe you can just describe what that is. Yeah, so a community land trust is a not for profit dedicated to acquiring and stirrering lands as I said before for long term benefit so they have clauses of around for perpetual affordability for permits and land stewardship and different land trust actually are experimenting with different modes of how they are going to be achieving that goal. So we're working right now with actually the Toronto Chinatown Community Land Trust on a different lab to help them identify their modes of how they can preserve in Chinatown and then in this lab we have a number out of the Ottawa region who have already started to experiment with different financing tools so they're asking questions around how can we create different ways to bring money into the land trust so that we can then acquire the land or make intensify a property that we already have. So we're unlocking both on the finance side right to access different different places than just what the traditional community housing providers can access. Let me just feed this back to you and make sure that I so the benefit of a community land trust would be that because one of the drivers of housing costs has been the commodification of housing right so. You know people buy a house used to be you know my parents bought a house in 1970 something and still live there and you know that you know they've they've they've got that asset which has grown over time but which is one thing however many people will buy one two three four five houses as an investment and drive up land prices and use that for income and all that which again is a fine legitimate way of earning an income that the effect though is that the price of housing goes up because of the significant profit. The land trust kind of removes the profit motive from from this where you're just looking at your you exist not to make a profit but to at least break even I assume and provide good housing as it relates to a neighborhood or a population group a group of interest something something like that is that roughly. Yeah you're nailing it the big shift is around this idea of what they we call permanent land stewardship so they're not there's no intention to sell the land for a profit so we're keeping it out of the speculative real estate market and it's also community land trust are taking a community. way of thinking about land. So they're not only doing housing. They're also thinking about commercial spaces and green spaces. So they're trying to look at, you know, what is of, you know, some of the opportunities they're looking at are, of course, old rental buildings that might be going up for sale and instead of them going into the speculative market, how can you keep them affordable in your neighborhood? So it's a way to sort of push pause on some of the gentrification that can come and the result of that being instead of a new Starbucks or whatever that you might open an arts community art center or something along those lines. So okay, so that's the thinking around that could benefit people with an intellectual disability or other need or in need of affordable housing. Exactly. And so why families are attracted to taking their homes to community land trust is because they're thinking beyond their loved one. They want to make sure that when they trans this transfers, it also will continue to serve the community after their loved one is no longer living there. Right, right, right, right, which would be different from just selling it in the private marketplace and getting a return. And there's also a philosophical alignment because their, because community land trusts are thinking about this from a community like quite a few, they're very interested in integrated communities and how do you ensure multiple people with different needs are being served? Right. Well, it's the essence of community. Right, that's so sorry Alex, go ahead. I think also, so you know, with solutions, Apple, we put in our application, the round of, you know, applications when we submitted CMHC's focus was on trying to increase community housing stock. And I think that that was another kind of attractive element is you're taking housing out of the private housing speculative market and, you know, are shifting that over into the realm of affordable housing, community housing. Okay. So Alex, what comes next, your halfway through where you've got a lot of work to do, what should people stay tuned for? What's up next? Well, we're in our prototype phase, so we're really working now to prioritize, we've a, you know, a very long list of, I will, a long wish list of tools and, you know, things that we want to create to be able to support the model and to really bring the model to life for people to demystify it, right? So, like a journey map of some kind and other tools that can support the process. And then I think once we come up with some of those prototypes, it'll be kind of back to the drawing board with our partners and different technical experts to test, you know, the validity of the different things that we're creating. So I think that will be an exciting and challenging phase of the solutions lab journey. So, are you looking for people to sort of give input or share like, if people are, if people's interest is, is, uh, tweaked or peaked because of listening to you describe your project, how can they get involved or certainly or stay up today? Yeah, so we have a website and we can share the link with you. Yeah, I've heard in our notes. Yeah, that would be great. And so there's more information that's available on the website. There's also a link to the, we did a launch last year in June. People can watch that if it's like, and then they can sign up to receive update from us. There's a form they can tell it to that. They can also reach out to, you know, our contact information was listed on that website. So if they wanted to reach out with questions or to engage with us around the lab, we would, we would definitely welcome that. That's great. It's interesting. We start off by saying there's a lot going on and there's a lot. There's a lot of things actually being built, a lot of ideas kind of that are being generated in a lot of aspirations that people have. So this is, this is, I was really encouraged, Alex, I heard you present this at a, at a housing forum. We were at an auto on number of months ago and was, I was not aware of this project until you presented it. So I was really glad to see that because the innovation comes from people just having good ideas, getting the right people together and pursuing them. So, you know, congratulations on the thinking and the work thus far and, you know, good luck on where it leads. I'm sure it'll be an important part of what, of what the solution to the housing in support, the crisis in support of housing and especially those for people with intellectual disabilities. Yeah, and please do sign up on the website and, you know, if you've got experience creating a model that you think we should hear about, we'd love to hear about it. But it in the mix because we often talk about learning from people who are figuring it out on their own and then how can you make that work for more people? It's a really big part of what we're trying to do because, as you said, it's going to take lots of different partners and lots of different thinking and then testing it with the people who actually would benefit from the, whatever model we create, we really are committed to making sure it works and it's not just maybe out of page. One part of the puzzle, but an important part for sure. Alex, Julie, thank you so much. Thank you, Grant. Thank you. Okay. Take care. Thank you for listening, watching, sharing. We release a new episode of Community Chats on the 15th and the 30th of each month. So don't forget to subscribe to stay up to date. [Music]