This new episode of Progressive Political Economy spotlights Carolyn Whitzman, Adjunct Professor and Senior Housing Researcher at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and an expert advisor with the Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART) project at the University of British Columbia. In this episode, she discusses what assessment tools exist to help solve the worsening housing crisis in Canada and bring rents down to affordable prices.
Whitzman charts the beginnings of the current housing crisis in the calamitous shift of government policy after the 1990s and shows where governments must begin in order to ensure those who require housing the most will have it in the future. She emphasizes that in order to make the good society, it is important to ensure adequate and affordable housing for a dignified life.
To learn more about Canada’s housing crisis and how to solve it, be sure to read Whitzman’s new book Home Truths: Fixing Canada’s Housing Crisis, out on October 21st, 2024.
The Broadbent Institute and Perspectives Journal have launched Progressive Political Economy: a new video series that spotlights progressive economics and political ideas that push for a just and equal society.
Through interviews with Canada’s leading progressive economic thinkers, we lay out alternative approaches to orthodox economic thinking that have lent today’s inequalities and injustices. From broadly envisioned industrial strategy in the fight against climate change to episodic economic phenomena like sellers’ inflation felt by all during the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Progressive Political Economy series brings forward debates and inquiry on today’s major issues while being grounded in working-class, social democratic values. Valuing people over profits, decommodification, and a political economy that works for the 99%, the ideas shared in this Progressive Political Economy series are a much needed counterweight to Canada’s business-backed economic discourse.
