Home Truths to Homeward Bound: Deeply Affordable Housing to Address Canada’s Housing Crisis

Carolyn Whitzman is a housing and social policy researcher. She has worked as an expert advisor to UBC’s Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART) project, which developed standardized best practices for analysing housing need, using government land for nonmarket housing, and nonmarket property acquisition, using detailed, open data. These tools have influenced federal housing policy. Currently, she works as a senior housing researcher at University of Toronto’s School of Cities, analysing best practices to scale affordable ‘missing middle’, modular, and replicable housing. She is on the federal government’s Expert Panel on the Homebuilding Industry.

Carolyn is the author, co-author or lead editor of six books, including the forthcoming Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis (UBC On Point Press, October 2024) and Clara at the Door with a Revolver: the scandalous Black suspect, the exemplary white son, and the murder that shocked Toronto (UBC On Point Press, 2023). She is the author or co-author of over 80 book chapters, articles, and reports, on issues related to the right to the city. She has provided expertise to national, state/provincial and local governments, UN Women, UN Habitat, and private and non-profit organizations.

Shaimaa Yassin is a research director at the Institute for Research on Public Policy, leading the Toward a More Equitable Canada research program, which has published studies on proposed dental care and pharmacare programs. She is also a member of the secretariat of the Affordability Action Council, a collaboration of diverse policy and community leaders that works to identify ways to help meet the basic needs of lower-income Canadians. She is a policy-oriented economist with over a decade of experience in translating challenging academic research into strategic advice for a broad audience.

Previously, Shaimaa served as senior director at the Community Economic Development and Employability Corporation (CEDEC) in Montreal. Shaimaa has consulted for several governments and organizations such as the World Bank, Chaire “Sécurisation des Parcours Professionnels” in France, and the Economic Research Forum in Egypt. She was a research fellow in the economics department of several academic institutions, namely McGill University (Swiss National Science Foundation Fellow), the University of Lausanne and the University of Neuchâtel. She has an extensive record of publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles, a Presses de Sciences Po book, Les Accidents de Carrière, and two Oxford University Press volumes on labour markets in the Middle East and North Africa. Shaimaa holds a PhD in economics from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a MSc in empirical and theoretical economics from the Paris School of Economics.