Maintaining and Renewing the Social Housing Stock: Canada in a Comparative Perspective
Across the world, social housing built during the twentieth century remains a vital source of affordable homes for millions of people. In Canada, the vast majority of social housing was built over twenty-five years ago and is now rapidly aging, with about 58 percent of units currently over forty-five years old. Maintaining and renewing this housing is a major challenge, with more than one in five social housing units nationwide classified as being in “poor condition”, and social housing systems worldwide facing similar pressures.
In the first of two seminars, Dr. Collin Bernard drew on cases from England, France, and Austria to examine how different systems govern and fund the maintenance and renovation of their social housing stock. The talk considered what implications can be drawn from abroad to ensure the long-term sustainability of Canada's social housing stock.
Speaker:
Collin Bernard is the 2025–2026 Richard M. Bird Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG). He holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and his research focuses on the evolution of social housing finance in Canada and internationally over the past three decades.