Your Research Can Help Improve BC’s Housing Policy

Dale Anderson, Housing Policy Branch, British Columbia

Dale Anderson from the Housing Policy Branch in British Columbia provides this week’s guest blog post. 

BC’s Housing Policy Branch develops housing policy on behalf of the British Columbia provincial government. We work in three primary areas: social housing; affordable market housing; and strata (condo) housing. The branch also serves as liaison with BC Housing, the Crown corporation responsible for implementing the Province’s housing direction. We also work closely with the two other branches that, with Housing Policy, make up the Office of Housing and Construction Standards: the Residential Tenancy Branch, and the Building and Safety Standards Branch.

Not surprisingly given the importance of housing to individual households, communities and wider society, our work encompasses a wide range of policy issues. Some of the issues we’re interested in include:

• The most effective strategies to prevent and address homelessness.
• How depreciation reports and other measures help strata (condo) corporations better manage their common assets over the long term.
• How best to structure rent supplement programs, to assist lower-income households.
• How investor-owned, rented strata units affect the rental and the homeownership markets.
• Housing affordability, including assessing how laneway and carriage housing, or access to good transit, affect affordability.
• The preparedness of our communities and housing stock for the increase of seniors we will see in the coming years, and how best to support ‘aging in place.’
• Where and how manufactured home parks best provide affordable housing options.
• General economic conditions and demographic changes affecting housing.

The Housing Policy Branch would like better connections with researchers across BC (and elsewhere) doing housing and related research, to support us in our work. Your research can help improve housing policy in British Columbia, so please consider sharing it with us. Or, as readers of this blog might say, ‘mobilize your knowledge’ by sending it to a group of policy analysts interested in learning from you. We’d be pleased to receive summaries of your research findings, copies of your research, links to your websites, or notice of public presentations you do. You can reach us at housing.policy@gov.bc.ca.

Dale Anderson is a Senior Policy Advisor in the Housing Policy Branch. She can be reached at Dale.Anderson@gov.bc.ca. More information about the Housing Policy Branch and the Office of Housing and Constructions Standards is available at: www.housing.gov.bc.ca.

York University and United Way York Region Receive Funding for Knowledge Mobilization / L’Université York et United Way de la Région de York reçoivent du financement pour la mobilisation des connaissances

By David Phipps, RIR-York

United Way York Region and York University can build on their 5 year knowledge mobilization collaboration thanks to new funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This funding will allow them to support collaborations on income and housing vulnerability.

United Way de la Région de York et l’Université York peuvent poursuivre le travail collaboratif en matière de mobilisation des connaissances qu’ils ont entrepris il y a 5 ans, et ce, grâce au financement reçu par le Conseil de recherche en sciences humaines du Canada. Ces fonds leur permettront de travailler en collaboration sur le thème du revenu et de la vulnérabilité relative au logement.

In June the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council announced a grant to York University and United Way York Region of $141,798 to invest in knowledge mobilization focused on income and housing vulnerability.  The grant is lead jointly by Daniele Zanotti (CEO, United Way York Region), David Phipps (Director, Research Services & Knowledge Exchange) and Steven Gaetz (Associate Professor, Faculty of Education), as well as Michaela Hynie (Associate Professor, Department of Psychology and the Program Evaluation Unit in the York Institute for Health Research). There is an urgent need for research and evidence to inform effective community responses, programs and services for housing and income vulnerability. Building on their five year knowledge mobilization partnership, York University and United Way York Region will implement a community-campus knowledge mobilization strategy based on best practices so that York housing and income vulnerability research and expertise is accessible to community partners. This grant builds on the CIHR funded Knowledge Translation supplement awarded to the partners in 2011 that funds knowledge mobilization activities focused on social determinants of health. Steven Gaetz, who also sits on the York Region Human Services Planning Board, says, “Knowledge mobilization has become very important in Canada. My area of research is homelessness and one of our key beliefs is that we have to figure out ways to mobilize homelessness research so that it can have a bigger impact on policy and practice. York University’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit has been a big support in this effort.”

While both the SSHRC and CIHR grants support a suite of services as recently described by York’s Knowledge mobilization Unit (see the knowledge mobilization blog post on Mobilize This!), at the core of these activities is funding for a community-based knowledge broker. While many university-based research programs and research units have staff who act as knowledge brokers only the six universities in the York-led ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche knowledge mobilization network have invested in knowledge brokers with a pan-university mandate. And of those six York is the only university to collaborate with their local partner to place a knowledge broker in the community. Jane Wedlock, Knowledge Mobilization Officer at United Way York Region, seeks to build capacity for community members to become partners in collaborative research projects and to work with Michael Johnny, Manager, Knowledge Mobilization at York University, to identify and support collaborations between university and community experts in housing and income vulnerability.

These collaborations will include graduate student interns (Summer 2013) and will be informed by more than 25 ResearchSnapshot clear language research summaries being developed from York University research articles over the summer of 2012.

“York University has transformed our work in the community” says Daniele Zanotti. “It has opened up the richness of community.

SSHRC handed out  95 grants in the October 2011 Public Outreach Grant competition. The York University/United Way York Region grant received the third highest funding of all grants and the highest amount of funding of those grants that had a community partner as a full co-applicant.United Way York Region is stronger because of that relationship and the university is stronger, with deeper roots in the community and greater opportunities to apply research to real lived experience.”

“York continues to build on and strengthen its commitment to community engagement, as identified in the Provostial White Paper,” said Robert Haché, York’s vice-president research & innovation.  “York’s researchers continue to share and co-create knowledge with the broader community, as exemplified by the success of our researchers in the receipt of funding for engaged scholarship through SSHRC’s Public Outreach grants program and the work of our researchers and Knowledge Mobilization Unit in further developing partnerships with community organizations, such as the United Way York Region.”

York University and United Way York Region have recently released a video speaking about the mutual value gained when they jointly invest in knowledge mobilization.

Everything is ready to go for another GS 500 Interdisciplinary Graduate course at the University of Victoria!

These courses match interdisciplinary graduate students up with real life research questions coming from a partnering agency in the community. For the fall 2009 course the Community partner is the BC Ministry of Housing and Social Development. Questions coming from the Ministry will focus on topics such as: homelessness in our community; rental market and market housing; housing needs in Aboriginal communities; sustainable and green housing, and much more.

The course will be co-taught by Dr. Bernie Pauly from the UVic faculty of nursing, and Dr. Cecile Lacombe, director of housing research for the BC Government. The Knowledge Mobilization Unit will facilitate the matching of graduate students to research questions appropriate for their area of study. The students will then work one on one with a research partner from the BC Ministry of Housing and Social Development, with a focus on action and recommendations to the Ministry. The end of the term will be marked by student presentations at a knowledge dissemination event that will open to all people who are interested in the topic.