There are many ways to make your kitchen more sustainable, especially given how often it is used and how much waste it produces. Kitchen appliances, in particular, put quite the strain on the environment. In fact, Tech Patio explains that appliances like your refrigerator use a tremendous amount of energy — comprising an average of 13% of your total home energy bill. And while appliances are one of the main sources of the problem, they can also be the solution.

Indeed, the near-infinite number of innovations in kitchen tech is making this part of your home a more efficient and eco-friendly place. So where should you begin? To help you get started, we’ve put together some tips to make your kitchen more environment-friendly!

Avoid Plastic Kitchen Tools

One thing you can do to have a more eco-friendly kitchen is to refrain from using plastic kitchen tools. While convenient, plastic tools such as banana slicers and egg separators all end up becoming waste that is dumped in landfills. This is especially worrisome considering that CNN predicts that the world will have 710 million tons of plastic pollution by 2040.

Instead of plastic kitchen tools, a better option would be to make use of kitchen tools made of eco-friendly material. For instance, you can use a wooden cutting board instead of a plastic one. To make it even more eco-friendly, try to look for one that uses reclaimed wood.

Use Multi-Purpose Appliances

While avoiding plastic tools is a great place to start, ditching single-purpose kitchen tools and appliances will also go a long way in lessening your overall impact on the environment. Think about it: how many single-purpose kitchen tools do you have in your kitchen, be it juicers or toasters? All of these gadgets will end up in a landfill once they’ve broken down. This is why you should make it a priority to purchase versatile tools that can cater to various kitchen needs.

You can start by looking for a multi-purpose rice cooker. If your diet isn’t big on grains, you might think that rice cookers are pretty impractical. However, thanks to technological innovations, many modern rice cookers can do more than just make rice. We Know Rice’s list of the best Aroma Rice cookers highlights how today’s advanced rice cookers can fulfill a multitude of different functions. Whether you need to sauté food at high heat, prepare porridge, or cook soup — a rice cooker can do it all.

Lessen Phantom Electricity Usage

Another way you can lessen your negative impact on the environment is by, of course, saving electricity. And while we’ll be discussing specific devices that can help you do this, it’s important we also address phantom electricity usage. This refers to the electricity used by devices that are plugged in regardless if they are switched on or not.

You can simply unplug the devices when you’re leaving your house, but it’s understandable to forget to do this sometimes. This is where smart power strips will come in handy, since they allow you to turn off devices using your smartphone as long as they are plugged into the power strip.

Make Use of A Smart Refrigerator

Refrigerators are often one of the top appliances that eat up the most electricity, due to the sheer amount of power it needs to keep food cold. Luckily, technology has improved the humble refrigerator to the point that it is able to use significantly less energy.

Green America’s article on climate-friendly fridges highlights how smart fridges expend less energy by keeping track of your fridge-opening habits. Some brands like GreenFreeze even make use of naturally occurring hydrocarbons instead of traditional cooling systems, which are said to be better for the environment.

Lights Make All The Difference

Your kitchen’s lights also use up a significant amount of electricity. While you may think that compact fluorescent bulbs are sustainable due to their energy-saving capabilities, they contain mercury — which is harmful to both humans and the environment.

If you really want to be eco-friendly, LED lights are the way to go. They are both energy-efficient and are less impactful on the environment due to how long they last — with the average LED light bulb lasting around 100,000 hours.

Save Water Using Smart Sinks

Having an eco-friendly kitchen also means reducing the amount of water you waste. When it comes to saving water, it’s the little things that you have to watch out for. While it may seem insignificant, the amount of water wasted from leaky faucets will rack up if left unattended.

Tools such as the Phyn Smart Water Assistant can prevent this from happening by monitoring the water in your kitchen. It can even keep track of the status of your pipes and will alert you of leaks that are present in your kitchen

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Educational Video Companion: Indigenous Entrepreneurship and Housing Security

Environatives Training Initiative

Educational Video Companion: Indigenous Entrepreneurship and Housing Security

Environatives Training Initiative

Environatives Training Initiatives is a not-for-profit started by Becky Big Canoe which aims to design and deliver training programs for Indigenous women and youth that address food security, natural building skills and entrepreneurial skills. The goal is to provide culturally sensitive and targeted training in order to help lift people out of poverty, dependence, and vulnerability to harm. The food security and permaculture training offered by Environatives provides knowledge and skills to create community gardens, take produce to the market and start microbusinesses. Experts in the sustainable building industry deliver the natural building training, and the entrepreneur training is designed to be relevant to students and their local communities. These programs empower Indigenous women and youth by helping them find independence and overall well-being in their lives. 

Indigenous Entrepreneurship in Canada

Basic assumptions of mainstream theories of entrepreneurship sometimes conflict with certain Indigenous cultural values. This is because the perception of opportunity is culturally relative, as is the measurement of success, both of which are important elements of entrepreneurship (Dana 2015). Indigenous entrepreneurship often incorporates community needs and objectives more holistically than Western forms of entrepreneurship. 

Becky Big Canoe and many other Indigenous entrepreneurs, approach entrepreneurial activities with the desire to be environmentally sustainable. This comes from a strong connection to the land as its original inhabitants, which has been disrupted by colonization. As such, taking part in entrepreneurial enterprises offers a chance to reassert control over traditional territories and build community (Sengupta & Vieta, 2015). A significant amount of Indigenous entrepreneurial activity occurs outside the realm of traditional market exchanges. In the absence of market transactions, wealth can be generated by individuals and within the community without the sale of a good or service for profit. Regulatory barriers often prompt Indigenous entrepreneurs away from the traditional market setting. While there are multiple approaches to Indigenous entrepreneurship, it is often designed to be inclusive of economic, environmental, social and cultural goals, typically with a greater emphasis on cultural values than more non-Indigenous social enterprises (Sengupta & Vieta, 2015). 

Canadian Indigenous Housing Security

Housing insecurity disproportionately affects the Indigenous population in Canada. The fact that Indigenous people are the fastest growing demographic in the Canadian population increases the challenges of supplying housing and puts greater pressure on band councils to do so.

According to 2016 census data, one in five Indigenous people in the country lived in a home in need of major repairs. Comparatively, in the same year, only six per cent of the non-Indigenous population reported living in a dwelling that required major repairs. In addition, those living on-reserve are more likely to live in the least adequate housing conditions, as people with registered Indian status who lived on reserve were 3 times more likely to need major housing repairs, with 44.% requiring repairs, compared to 14% for those living off-reserve. 

On top of the issue of repairs, about one quarter of Indigenous people live in crowded housing. A higher proportion of Indigenous people with a registered Indian status lived in crowded housing than without (27 per cent versus 12 per cent). This proportion is even higher among those living on reserve than off (37 per cent versus 19 per cent).

Overcrowding can lead to a number of health and social issues. As Becky Big Canoe mentioned, mould is often found in poorly constructed and crowded houses, and poses health risks as a result. In some communities, there are so many people living in one house that they must sleep in shifts, revealed an interim report of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples. This can disrupt a child’s focus in school, resulting in lower education achievement rates and lower employment rates. Overcrowding can also lead to homelessness. 

Furthermore, a number of houses built on reserves are not constructed for the environment they’re situated in. Due to the costs of construction northern regions, many receive below-par construction. This is something Big Canoe directly addressed by building her own home from straw. There is also big problem with inadequate water infrastructure, resulting in drinking water advisories. Health Canada indicated that there were 100 long-term drinking water advisories and 47 short-term in 102 First Nations communities south of the 60th parallel as of Oct. 31, 2017. Boiling water for so many people can also contributes to mould growth, and thus worsen housing conditions.

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To find out more about Becky Big Canoe’s non-profit Environatives Training initiatives, check out her website http://www.backtobasicscanada.com/environative-training

To find out more about the problem of inadequate housing for Indigenous peoples, see the following sources: 

• HOUSING ON FIRST NATION RESERVES: Challenges and Successes Interim Report of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, February 2015. https://sencanada.ca/content/sen/committee/412/appa/rms/08feb15/Home-e.htm

• Statistics Canada. (2017). The housing conditions of Aboriginal people in Canada. Retrieved from https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016021/98-200-x2016021-eng.cfm 

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HOUSING ISSUES in Canada’s Indigenous communities have been well documented for decades without any positive changes. As populations grow rapidly, housing demand continues to increase and the existing shortfall becomes exacerbated. Housing need creates not only a lack of suitable shelter but a community health crisis. The physical strain on built infrastructure from overcrowding, poor quality of construction and prevalence of mould growth cause physical harm while the inappropriateness of design and social stress put on community members and youth alike contribute to problems of substance abuse, hopelessness and suicide. Building the required number of shelter units may reduce some of these effects, but it’s only through a complete reconceptualization of the system that housing can become a catalyst to improving community health.

A change in housing outcomes can only come as a result of changing housing processes. 

The existing on-reserve federal housing policy created in 1996 aimed to increase local control and provide flexibility to community leaders, recognizing the differences across Canada’s Indigenous communities. However, these were largely token changes, transfers in power were not accompanied by the required investments or commitments to capacity building. Instead, this policy attempts to displace responsibility from a negligent government repeating the colonial tactic of under-resourcing communities, entrenching a sense of crisis and dependency. Housing systems continue to be tangled in a complicated web of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Policy and Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada departmental requirements, creating more reporting and program management problems than housing solutions.  A true alteration of power in the housing system would see a narrative shift from meeting federal requirements to meeting local needs.

A change in housing outcomes can only come as a result of changing housing processes. Housing must be understood as part of a network of community assets, culturally relevant and a critical solution to local needs. Catch-all federal policies, focused on the cause-de-jour, recently mould growth and its resulting ill-health, disguise a symptom of inadequate and inappropriate houses as the totality of the problem. Focus instead must be placed on local values, traditions and ways of knowing. Rejecting a conversation about creating higher and stricter national standards in favour of one which centres on usefulness and practicality of solutions in meeting local needs. Planners and designers need to partner with local populations not imposing solutions to problems of their own making, but instead with an understanding of their historical complicity in the creation of the housing crisis and a willingness to listen, value and engage with local solutions.

Our own work at +city lab looks to begin this conversation in one remote First Nations community in Northern Ontario. The project Visioning Our Future Dwelling Together provides space for community members to reimagine and rethink housing, in a completely community-led process. Discussions of issues and solutions are driven by community members, as we try to gain an understanding of and record problems with the current system while focusing on solutions. Solutions are derived from a series of interactive and creative explorations of preferences focused both inside the home and at the community level between homes. As well, sharing is encouraged between community members, creating inter-generational understandings and looking to develop consensus and understanding of community values.

Importantly, these solutions are community specific requiring a move away from national-level implementation and forcing the relevant disciplines to concentrate on the local. While much of this work in determining community preferences can be left to the market in urban municipalities, reserves existing on crown land remove this potential. Instead, preferences must be determined through better practice, a practice which begins by recognizing the historical role of housing as a tool of assimilation and commits to actions of reconciliation in creating improved community health outcomes.

Similarly the narrative must be moved away from a simple short-sighted cost effectiveness towards one which values health and success. It can no longer be sufficient to create shelter units for Canada’s Indigenous people which trap them in a cycle of social inequities and continued reliance on the federal government. Instead, planners and designers must recognize the social impact of their work recognizing as many Indigenous people already have the role of housing in a variety of health outcomes, including the epidemic of youth suicides. Through listening, and valuing Indigenous knowledge, and importantly making it actionable within the housing system disciplines can play an active role improving community health. 

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Imagination is key to innovation. After 18 years of constructing and racing solar-powered cars the Queen’s Solar Design Team, situated at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario, plunged head first into building sustainable and energy efficient homes. They ended up placing first at the US Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon in 2013 alongside Carleton University and Algonquin College for their net-zero home, and are now taking on a new challenge. Their goal? Building a completely autonomous home capable of surviving the Canadian winter.

The Queen’s Solar Education Centre as it is called is located at Queen’s University and will be used as a centre for inspiration, innovation and education.

Unlike a net zero home, which gives as much electrical energy to the grid as it draws from it, an autonomous home is completely independent of outside power sources and municipal water systems. It eats what it makes.

“For example,” says Matt Bowen, the Electrical Manager, “we feature Motech 235W photovoltaic panels, to generate electricity from sunlight. We use 8 large capacity Surette Rolls batteries to store the electricity generated by the solar panels, for use at night or during days of low sunlight.”

“I’d say, right now, the most impressive part of the home is the Solar Photovoltaic (PV) system simply because it’s the only system that’s nearing a working state” Bowen also mentions. “I’m very excited to see where our heating system ends up though, I believe it will be a very impressive system of technologies.”

The home will also feature “an integrated HVAC and hot water system heated with solar thermal technology, as well as rainwater collection, storage and filtration systems making use of grey-water runoff and compost to nourish the home’s flora,” as was stated on The Engineering Society of Queen’s University website.

The team has three main objectives with the house. The first is to give students the hands on opportunity of working with sustainable and energy efficient homes. “The hope is that they’ll sort of be inspired by this work, and decide to work in environmental fields and the solar industry,” says Katie Yang, the Buisness Manager on the team.

Close up of the exterior of the solar house

The second is to make the home a center for innovative research. Not only will it be a space to implement existing technologies, but also it will test out new ideas for similar houses. The team hopes that by doing so, they will discover a way to make living off grid easier by either making it less expensive or more efficient.

Their third and final objective with the house is broader outreach through community workshops. For example, during the summer the team visited a group of campers at the Eco Adventure Camp in Kingston. The workshop covered renewable energy and sustainable living while at the same time challenged the 10-14 year old participants to design their own eco-homes and solar-powered LEGO cars.

Campers at the Elbow Lake Environmental Education Centre design their own Eco-homes with QSDT. (Queen’s Solar Design Team). Photo Credit: Queen’s Solar Design Team

Another part of holding workshops is giving tours to elementary and university students as well as community members. Yang says, “We tell them [about] the technology that’s inside the house and where you can get them, and that they’re already on the market, which shocks people, they’re like ‘I didn’t know that this was already there, there’s a solar powered fridge,’ and they’re quite enamored by a lot of the technology.”

The team’s work also wouldn’t be possible without their numerous supporters, mentors, faculty members and sponsors. The team is especially excited about Bullfrog Power, a renewable energy company,who became one of their sponsors for $15,000 in the summer.

At the end of the day, imagination is what powers the drive for creation. “It’s still a work in progress,” says Yang. “Sometimes we get a little bit carried away when we’re imagining – we’re just like ‘oh we want this house and we want this to be amazing’– I wanted a bunk bed that doubled as a sofa… but we’re not at that stage yet. Although, I did hear that, at one point, there was even talk about a solar powered flat screen TV!”

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Almost 70 years ago, the United Nations declared adequate housing to be a fundamental human right, yet over a billion people lack this right across the globe. Canada’s status as a high-ranking country on global human development and liveability indices should imply that adequate housing for all has long been achieved here. However, a visit to most First Nations reserves, high-poverty neighbourhoods or some ethnic enclaves provides significant evidence to the contrary. 

While many Canadians are relatively well housed, we lack adequate housing for low-income families, individuals with mental illness and disabilities, seniors, Indigenous people, and recent immigrants and refugees. This is not just an issue of inadequate shelter. Beyond meeting basic needs, having a home and a community by extension is a precursor to a myriad of social, economic and health benefits. This is true for all people but in particular for international migrants whose top priority, even before securing employment, education and access to health care, is locating housing.

The link between economic well-being and adequate housing is well-documented and often central to policy arguments for improved housing in this country.  What is less prominent in these discussions are the health and social co-benefits promoted through regulatory and policy frameworks supporting adequate shelter for all. For instance, as a social determinant of health, poor housing conditions 

have been linked to higher mortality and morbidity rates directly (e.g., asbestos, radon, lead in dwellings) and indirectly (e.g., stress associated with lack of financial resources and crowded living conditions). 

Inadequate housing is correlated with many social disadvantages including social exclusion, poor education outcomes in children, food insecurity, and reduced quality of life. Further, for Canada’s large immigrant and refugee population, securing adequate housing is a marker of successful integration and a first step toward building a sense of belonging and community.

The Canadian government’s highly politicized commitment to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February 2016 – with the expectation of thousands more to come in subsequent months – brought Canada’s housing issue to the forefront of political debates, at least as it relates to immigration and resettlement. Citizenship and Immigration Canada temporarily paused the arrival of the refugees in Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver at the request of settlement agencies who were dealing with a housing backlog. One immigrant agency stated that incoming families were larger than expected and finding housing with a sufficient number of rooms was a challenge. Many of the newly arrived refugees in Toronto have been living in hotels for months as settlement agencies scramble to find adequate housing. 

The concept of sense of place – the emotional connection between people and place – is also evident in popular culture. Rappers from neighbourhoods like Los Angeles’ Compton and New York’s Harlem are proud to sing about these roots.”

This situation is not unique to the Syrian refugees – past research acknowledges that many newcomers are poorly housed in the early years post-migration. For instance, a 2012 study using the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada found that recent immigrants living in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver spend two to three times more of their total income on housing compared to the general population, in large part due to their low income status. Many spend years in precarious employment circumstances impending entry into the expensive real estate market in Canada’s largest cities. 

Further, immigrant families are four times more likely than the Canadian-born populations to live in crowded conditions. This same study found a marked improvement in newcomers’ housing conditions over time as their incomes increase and home ownership became a reality. 

However, this experience is not evenly distributed across the newcomer population. At a greater disadvantage are refugees, who often have limited financial and social resources. In addition, visible minorities, which make up a large portion of the total immigrant population, experience discrimination in the housing market. 

As immigrants continue to make up a growing portion of Canada’s population, the impact of the current housing circumstances needs to be at the forefront of the policy agenda in order to facilitate social integration. When I speak of integration, I am referring to broader feelings of inclusion and belonging as an addition to the more pragmatic and conventional markers such as home ownership. Social inclusion as a marker of integration goes beyond actions that emphasize the “doing”, such as entering the labour market and buying a home, to those focused on “being.” That means building strong, diverse social networks, participating without barriers in social and political events, and benefitting from the rights and freedoms provided by Canadian legislation. 

One way to think about housing and integration is through the work of Abraham Maslow, the psychologist behind the hierarchy of human needs. Self-actualization and personal growth are at the top, and basic necessities like food at the bottom. Housing has traditionally been confined to the bottom level of the pyramid as it meets the basic physiological need for shelter and protection from the elements. Housing affordability is most important to this level as it is connected to other basic needs such as food. 

But shelter is only the tip of the iceberg for how housing impacts our lives. Moving up Maslow’s hierarchy to the level of safety, including the need for personal, health and financial security, also has obvious connections to housing. Quality and suitable housing that is not overcrowded or in need of repair contributes to health and personal security. Financial security relates directly to housing affordability, whether through home ownership and building home equity, or the ability to contribute part of personal income to financial investments.

When we consider housing needs in a “Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs” perspective, we shift our thinking from a house as simply a physical dwelling to a more meaningful concept of “home”. At its highest level, a home, whether rented or owned, becomes a structure that supports occupants who have a strong sense of place, and who have the confidence to creatively engage in their community.

However, it is the levels of Maslow’s hierarchy dealing with belonging and esteem that most closely relate to the broad understanding of integration and social inclusion. This is where thinking of housing as a physical dwelling that meets our basic needs of shelter and security shifts to the more nuanced and meaningful concept of home. 

When a house is given positive meaning, it becomes a home. It is the place of family, connection, privacy and culture. For many, remembrance of their childhood home incites feelings of nostalgia, self-identity, rootedness and attachment. The sense of place – the emotional connection between people and place – is widely documented by researchers in a variety of disciplines. 

This concept is also evident in popular culture. Rappers from neighbourhoods like Los Angeles’ Compton, and New York’s Harlem are proud to sing about these roots. Eminem’s “Imported from Detroit” commercial for Chrysler attempts to sell cars while simultaneously promoting the troubled city. Sense of place is so strong that residents return to communities devastated by disaster even when hazards are still present. Examples include New Orleans and Port au Prince where residents returned long before sites were declared safe to inhabit, or the residents returning to the highly toxic exclusion zone after Chernobyl’s nuclear disaster in the 1980s. 

Sense of place is dependent on both personal and place-specific factors, and the emotional connection component is of course highly subjective. However, research has identified several predictors of attachment including length of residence and neighbourhood social ties, both of which recent newcomers lack. Some research suggest that authentic attachments may not be possible for newcomers based on their limited time in the area, their lack of contribution to the creation of that place and their identity as outsiders. Others do suggest a version of sense of place can be developed but not as easily by immigrants from diverse socioeconomic or political contexts.

In Canada, immigrants have long been a central part of nation building, though their participation has at times been the result of exploitive conditions, as in the case of Chinese railroad workers and Eastern European Prairie farmers. The creation of ethnic villages like Vancouver’s Chinatown and Toronto’s Little Italy include land uses and architectural designs that are reminiscent of pre-migration places of attachment. These ethnic villages create a form of physical and social belonging to both the past and the present while creating a future site of belonging for younger generations and future immigrants. 

Toronto has the highest percentage of unaffordable housing at 24 percent total. Inadequate housing is correlated with many social disadvantages such poor education outcomes in children, food insecurity and reduced quality of life. Adequate housing improves health and social conditions, particularly for the most vulnerable part of our population (see “Housing Heals and Saves,” page 34). With respect to Canada’s immigrant and refugee population, adequate housing is a marker of successful integration and a first step toward building a sense of belonging and community. Chart by Maxx Hartt & Katy Belshaw; sources: Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 2006.

The rise of “monster homes” – large multifamily homes on smaller lots often incorporating culture specific architectural design – are ways in which financially capable immigrants foster attachment to their present location. These homes bring together both the physical (exterior design, internal layout) and social (extended familial ties) elements that foster a sense of belonging that is culturally specific, while also showcasing wealth and prestige in a way that builds a sense of self and identity in a new country. 

Multiculturalism as a national policy is at least in theory well-suited to ease the transition and foster a sense of place and belonging for newcomers. It suggests that they can bring a piece of culture, language and identity with them, and build a sense of place and home that is a hybrid of values from both origin and host countries. In reality, this practice is often met with resistance. For instance, larger than “usual” homes built by Chinese immigrants in the 1990s produced tensions between newcomers and long-term residents in Vancouver and Toronto. It shows that there is a challenge to our acceptance of multiculturalism, particularly when it results in changing familiar environments that threaten the sense of belonging for long-term residents. This resistance is rooted in xenophobia.

Housing is an essential precursor to other settlement priorities for newcomers and a determinant of health and quality of life for all people. Thinking of ways that newcomers, and other inadequately housed populations, can be empowered to build their own community identities and sense of place is as important a consideration as the physical necessity of shelter. Innovative policy solutions should accordingly view the home as a source of inclusion and belonging for marginalized populations, and view home building as a precursor to successful integration in the short-term and nation building in the long-term. 

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“Because it’s 2015” is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s catch phrase and answer to why ethnic and gender diversity matter. The statement made headlines across Canada and beyond. A “mic drop” by Trudeau would have been the icing on the cake for social justice advocates everywhere. After all, the moment symbolized a final word of sorts on the equality debate. Equality is not up for debate in 2015, we were told – it is a goal to be realized, and Trudeau is leading by example.

As a 24 year-old woman, I am particularly interested in these developments. I’m currently working part time in the housing development consulting industry. It is now 2016 and I’m one of very few women in Canada’s development industry. So what can be changed? 

My first day on the job I was told to put on a pair of construction boots and a hard hat when we went for a site visit. Once I had all my safety gear on, my boss smiled and said, “20-years ago, I could not have hired you.” I’m grateful that the stigma surrounding a woman in work boots has subsided enough for my boss to comfortably hire a woman. Yet, I’m still bothered by the lack of women in the industry and the fact that my gender is something of note. 

Equality is not up for debate in 2015, we were told – it is a goal to be realized, and Trudeau is leading by example.”

My experience is not unique. I inquired with the offices of the Niagara Home Builders Association, and out of the registered developers on their list, only six of 49 are women, and all six of those women are the business partners of men. 

Digging a little deeper, I met with a local female developer. She and her partner develop senior housing. She attributes their business focus and success to her level of empathy and attention to detail. She views these as female traits that the male architects and engineers don’t bring to the table. We discuss the barriers she faces as a mother and developer. “My fear is, women need to make a choice.” If it’s 2015, why is it still more acceptable for men than women to be developers and have a family? 

Discrimination, it seems, is not only gender specific but also particular to parenthood. Sadly, it isn’t the first time I have been cautioned that women need to work harder to make up for the possibility of a pregnancy-related absence. It seems that even when hired, it is in roles that are associated with stereotypical gender traits, which does a disservice to everyone.

While the solutions to these issues are complex and ever evolving, certainly the first step is researching the reasons behind gender inequities. In my graduate research at the University of Waterloo, I’m part of the Generationed City research team led by Markus Moos. I specifically study how gender differences manifest in residential location and housing decisions. The data we are collecting from the Generationed City survey shows that women have a higher propensity to prefer suburban domestic spaces, in particular when they consider starting a family. 

This raises important questions about the way intensification and urbanization have neglected the gender and the motherhood dimensions of urban spaces. Stereotypes about suburbs being “best” for mother and child seem to persist. I suspect the shortage – and, in some cases, complete absence – of women in the housing development industry has a role to play in what is “sold” to women as a family-friendly lifestyle.

I hope the influence of our PM’s gender-equal cabinet trickles down into the development industry, and through it into our homes. We owe it to ourselves – and the women and men who have fought for equality in the past. 

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A 2007 study by the Nebraska Energy Office demonstrated that when a 2500-square-foot home is constructed, on average 3.6 metric tonnes of waste is produced, all of which is shipped to landfills. Attributed to hotter than average summers, air conditioners, large emitters of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants, are also quickly becoming the norm in Canadian homes.

In a society that is becoming increasingly aware of the human toll on the environment, it’s about time we re-examine our housing norms to lessen the impact of our shelter.  The rise of large detached homes is supporting evidence of local action having a global impact.  

The need to rethink design and construction practices of dwellings and align them with contemporary environmental constraints has taken centre stage in recent years. High-density urban configurations are now being regarded as a solution to some of the environmental consequences of sprawl, and governments have begun establishing standards for sustainable building practices. These standards go beyond national building codes, set stricter efficiency level criteria and act as accreditation systems. Builders and projects are qualified and distinguished according to the scope of their environmental pursuits. The US and Canadian Green Building Councils established the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program that has become the yardstick through which newly introduced residential projects are evaluated.

These trends and standards are an indication that commonly accepted home building norms are changing. The development of housing prototypes that can be constructed in higher densities is gradually taking hold. In addition, dwellings that conserve natural resources during construction, and energy after occupancy, are likely to be developed. With mounting energy costs expected, these efforts will appeal to builders and consumers alike.  

The housing market is seeing more sustainable advances in building: “Net-Zero” houses that are capable of producing renewable energy equal to the amount of their consumption, solar-powered homes, innovative heating ventilation and air conditioning technologies, green roofs, healthy indoor materials, recycled products and water efficient systems. Still, in the highly conservative home building industry, which is notoriously slow to innovate, one can expect the passage of a decade or two before these technologies will become widespread.

Between 1971 and 2006, there was a 31 percent drop in the numbers of married couples with children. Now, with more single people and single-parent househoulds, there is greater demand for small, easy to maintain, and affordable housing units. Source: Statistics Canada (Census of Canada).

Family transformations 

Recent changes to the composition of the Canadian demographic have affected the way people live and house themselves. The post-Second World War image of the family made up of the breadwinner father, stay-at-home mother and three dependent children was so pervasive that home builders could easily – and successfully – view the bulk of their potential clientele as a homogeneous buying block. As the average Canadian household evolves and changes, so does the potential homebuyer. 

In 1971, married couples with children accounted for 50 percent of all Canadian households, but by 2006 the number dropped to 31 percent. In parallel, there was an increase in the number of single person and single parent households – the number of single parent Canadian families has tripled in the past 30 years. The changing demographic make-up has also created a demand for small, easy-to-maintain and affordable housing units. It explains the increase in the construction of low-rise multi-unit dwelling types and apartment buildings in the heart of many large Canadian urban centres and, as of late, also in suburban areas.  

Immigration is another factor impacting Canada’s housing market given global immigration trends, and one can assume an increase in the number of new arrivals. Traditionally, immigrants tend to flock to urban centres, which stand to increase ownership and rental costs in some cities and their edge communities.

As the average Canadian household evolves and changes, so does the potential homebuyer.”

Over the past 50 years, the average age of the Canadian population has been on the rise. Those aged 65 and over have seen their numbers more than double in the past 35 years, creating a market demand for seniors’ housing, which is expected to intensify as more Canadians join this age bracket.  Some seniors will seek to trade their large, hard-to-maintain home for a smaller one.  

A key consideration in selecting new homes is location. Mobility of Canadians, at least for part of the year, to places that enjoy comfortable year-round weather is expected. Proximity to basic amenities will be another key consideration. Seniors will look for an apartment next to medical services, near or above shopping hubs and transportation routes, leading to the increased popularity of transit-oriented developments. We can also expect an increase in the number of multigenerational arrangements and a growing demand for units in assisted living types of accommodations. Yet, the practice of aging in place where the aged will stay put in their old adapted dwellings is likely to become the norm for most.

The senior population, which was once considered marginal, has reached a critical mass, validating alternative approaches by policy makers, developers and architects to the design, construction and marketing of homes. 

New economic realities

Economic fluctuations have taken a toll on society, impacting world markets and the lives of individual citizens. Secure employment and steady incomes are becoming less common. Lack of job security – and as a result, secure income – also makes it highly difficult for first-time homebuyers to purchase a dwelling in most large Canadian urban centres. In addition, an “affordability gap” has emerged, where the rate of house price increase has surpassed the rate of household income increase. 

Property prices have risen three times faster than average salaries in the past decade. The widening gulf in affordability can be explained by a combination of the increasing scarcity of serviced land, higher infrastructure expenses, rising construction costs and simple market demand and supply factors. 

In the past, first-time buyers sought large homes, which often overstretched their financial limits.The phenomenon is now more limited to the move-up market. Yet, following the 2008 global financial crisis, and due to an unstable labour market, a growing number of would-be homeowners can no longer accumulate the means necessary to buy a home, and as a result, the demand for less expensive, smaller homes is rising. It is expected that in the coming years, many first-time homebuyers will abandon the traditionally sought-after detached homes and have apartments as their first dwelling.

The home-building industry

A key question is whether the home building industry, in its present organizational structure, will be able to respond effectively to these emerging trends. To answer the question, one needs to be familiar with current Canadian home building practices. According to Clayton Research Associated Limited, some 85 percent of all low-rise dwelling units are constructed on-site – “stick-built” (vs prefabricated or modular).

The business model that characterizes this industry has evolved into a streamlined, concise system of operation. Many of the building firms involved in the production and delivery of housing are small, locally based and often family-owned operations. Many companies have only five or fewer employees on payroll and the majority of the building work is sub-contracted. 

On the other hand, in the past, home builders demonstrated a remarkable ability to amend their practices rapidly, overcome initial hesitation and respond to market need when presented with the opportunity to make significant profits. Examples are the rapid rise of suburbia and the construction of small homes in the post-Second World War era, the building of vast rental estates in the 1960s and 1970s and most recently, the mushroom of the condominium market in many Canadian cities. With this in mind, one can assume that newly emerging market trends will foster large-scale demand for new types of dwellings and intrigue the industry to act relatively fast. Builders, for example, will be unable to ignore the wave of baby boomers looking for smaller and more adaptable units, or renovations to existing homes to make them adaptable to users with reduced mobility.

In the coming decades, the Canadian housing market and the home-building industry are expected to face several constraints. Most notable is the need to respond to environmental challenges, changing demographics and new economic realities. If past events are any indication of future action, the industry, once again, will show resilience. The challenge, however, lies in predicting the degree of innovation that builders will be willing to embrace.  

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Over the past century or so, the housing problem has ceased to be one of poor living conditions and instead become one of affordability. This is a bit of a simplification, though. 

Affordability has always been an issue for many Canadian households, especially renters. In 1900, two-thirds of city-dwellers rented and many single people roomed in lodging houses or boarded in private homes. Then again, even today some people’s homes fail basic standards of health and comfort. This is most obviously true for Indigenous Canadians in urban areas and especially on reserves, which are still a national disgrace. 

But today, affordability, not housing conditions, is the biggest issue for most Canadians, above all in urban areas. We have never paid so much, or such a high proportion of our incomes for housing, and the services that usually go with it. 

Technology    

Critics have blamed the building industry for this situation, noting a low rate of innovation. Most dwellings are still assembled on site, so construction crews are moving from place to place, coping with the vagaries of the weather – while other commodities, from cars to clothing and food, are now mass-produced, often at the lowest possible cost. However, over the past couple of centuries, builders have actually invented or adopted a wide range of materials, tools and techniques transforming the building process. 

The biggest change in the 19^th century was the introduction of balloon framing, which is the use of two-by-fours and nails. It requires less wood and less skill than the previous methods used by Indigenous communities or European colonizers. Invented in the American Midwest, balloon framing initially had limited impact in Ontario and Quebec. But it greatly eased urban and rural settlement on the Prairies and in the West in the early 20^th century. In the postwar era, balloon framing became the Canadian suburban norm. 

Other methods that we now take for granted arrived more recently. From the 1920s, the introduction of wallboard replaced numerous skilled plasterers with fewer, semi-skilled tradespeople. Mid-century prefabricated roof trusses and door and window assemblies replaced and de-skilled carpentry. Both innovations reduced costs. In the 1940s, power tools made carpenters, roofers and other trades far more efficient. They have also enabled many amateurs to do their own home improvements.

Here is our current paradox. We have never built homes more efficiently. Relative to incomes, the costs of producing and shipping building materials, and fashioning and assembling them, have never been lower. So why do finished homes cost so much?

Standards    

An obvious answer is that our standards have risen. On the average, our homes are bigger and better. There are two reasons for this. The first is rising expectations – we have redefined preferences as needs. We take it for granted that homes will have basic appliances such as vacuums and stoves – we now expect all household members to have their own bedroom (and even their own bathroom). Today, at 2000 square feet, the average single-family home is more than twice as large as it was in the late 1940s. 

We now expect not only piped water and sewers and the electrical services that drive appliances, but also cable, Wi-Fi and air conditioning. In 1900, middle-class families could take the first set of services for granted, but even in urban areas a working class family might not have enjoyed any of them. It makes sense that as homes have become larger, offering more privacy and comfort, we should pay more.

For a persistent, significant minority of households, finding the money to pay the rent is a regular source of anxiety, and everyone who is trying to buy a home for the first time is daunted by the price.”

Another explanation for rising standards is that, for a variety of reasons, our governments have required them. Fires were one of the great scourges of 19^th century cities, and municipalities responded by imposing tougher regulations that prohibited some building materials while mandating others. From the 1940s, these and other requirements were incorporated into a national building code. 

Another urban scourge was disease. Health regulations were introduced to govern sanitation, ventilation and overcrowding. In 1912, at the instigation of its Medical Officer of Health, the City of Toronto enacted a by-law that required all property owners to install connections to the city’s water and sewer systems. More recently, local and national standards have been introduced, governing energy efficiency and insulation. Each of these initiatives has raised the price of housing, whether because of the costs of the requirements themselves or those of enforcement. Red tape itself has a price. For that reason, many regulations have provoked resistance, from residents as well as from builders. For the most part, however, Canadians have recognized that such requirements have saved lives and served the public good.

Land

Whether chosen or imposed, rising standards are only part of the story, and not the most important. The oldest cliché about real estate is that value is determined by location. The price of a dwelling, or what it rents for, reflects above all the value of the land on which it sits. Anyone who has entered – or tried to enter – the housing market in Vancouver or Toronto in recent years is acutely aware of this fact. 

Apart from local variations, the fact is that the cost of urban land and housing has always been more than its rural counterpart. Inevitably, as a rising proportion of Canadians have come to live in urban areas, a growing majority must pay urban prices. In 1850, 13 percent of Canadians lived in urban areas. By 1901, this proportion had risen to 35 percent, by 1950 to 63 percent and by 1970, the upward curve began to level off at 77 percent. This trend made it very likely that, over the long run, a rising percentage of Canadians would have to pay more for their housing and face the problem of affordability.

The situation is not quite that simple, of course. People have moved to cities, and immigrants to Canada have stayed there, because they have perceived an economic opportunity. With better jobs and higher incomes, they could afford the higher price of city living, just as Vancouverites can afford to pay more for housing because, on the average, they earn more than residents of Hamilton or Saint John. But the story does not end there. Indeed, it is only a footnote in the story of urban land.

The key issue is that the price of urban land, and therefore housing, will always rise relative to incomes as long as those incomes are increasing more rapidly than the cost of other necessities, notably food, clothing and transportation. The reason is simple. In urban Canada, housing has been provided mostly by the private sector, with the strong support of the federal government since the 1930s. Today, more than 90 percent of all dwellings are privately owned, whether by homeowners or by landlords. 

The price of that housing is determined through a bidding process, with buyers and renters paying what they can. Competition pushes prices up so that households end up paying close to the limit of what they can afford. When the price of other necessities falls, what people can and do pay for housing tends to rise.

Here, then, is another paradox. As our whole system of production has become more efficient, the relative cost of land and therefore housing has risen. 

In April 2016, when this rentseeker infomap was updated, the highest average home price was $1,757,700 and the needed income to mortgage this would be $320,932. On the other hand the lowest average home price in Canada was $156,000 and the needed income was $36,836. Buyer beware – there are other personal factors that individuals must consider, but by these numbers, the capital of New Brunswick is the most accessible to home buyer. Source: Rentseeker.ca

Implications

At first glance, it may seem odd that rising productivity has been associated with a steady increase in the absolute and relative cost of housing, so that many Canadians face serious problems of affordability and even homelessness. But, like many paradoxes, this one reflects complex historical patterns of causation. 

This complexity is, or should be, a warning to those who seek to address current housing issues. The normal approach has been to offer subsidies, whether directly or through tax expenditures. Although the public debate on this topic tends to focus on social housing, more than 93 percent of such subsidies go to homeowners. In whatever form, however, they have only temporary impacts. In the short run they help some people but, to the extent that they enable beneficiaries to pay more for their homes or apartments, they simply push prices up. In the long run, nobody benefits.

Another solution, tried in the past, is to remove at least some housing from the market system through the governmental purchase or direct provision of public housing. There are several difficulties with this, not least being the inequity of helping some people but not others – unless, that is, the program is carried through on a very large scale. The greatest challenge, however, is that it can only have a substantial effect on housing costs if the cost of land is reduced – that is, subsidized. 

The political question is who provides this subsidy? Municipalities can rarely afford to do so. Instead, in recent years there has been talk of requiring developers to play a role by mixing some affordable housing in with market-priced units, perhaps by negotiating deals whereby the developers are allowed to build at higher densities. Such “inclusionary housing” can have a useful impact in strong markets where developers’ profit margins are large.

But some observers argue that the most effective long-term solution is to tax away all or part of the increase in land value that is associated with urban development. Currently, even though rising land values reflect the investments of local governments in infrastructure, and of numerous neighbouring landowners, owners of property reap the full benefit of that increase. If the increase in value is the result of collective action, shouldn’t it accrue to the public, instead of to private landowners? 

This point of view was first argued in a consistent fashion at the end of the 19^th century by Henry George, who favoured a single tax on land. Today, in North America, a more moderate version is promoted by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The logic is impeccable, and limited versions have been attempted in various places. However, for Canada’s foreseeable future, the politics of taking such a step look to be intractable. The problem of affordability is here to stay unless citizens start to demand more direct and immediate action.  

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Just when people are applauding the comeback of our cities and urban areas, a new set of challenges has set in. People are flocking to large cities like New York, San Francisco, London, Toronto and Vancouver for the jobs, economic opportunities, density and vibrant lifestyles they offer. Yet, the influx has contributed to a mounting crisis of housing affordability, alongside rising inequality and the increasing geographic division of the rich and poor. 

In New York, this combination of increasing inequality and out-of-sight housing prices led to the election of progressive Mayor Bill DeBlasio. In San Francisco, rising housing prices have led to growing conflicts between locals and techies, including attacks on the buses that shuttle tech workers from their pricey homes in the city to their jobs in Silicon Valley.

Fortunately, Canada’s largest cities have yet to see these issues boil over into outright conflict, though they appear to be facing even higher housing prices than their American counterparts. In 2014, Vancouver had the highest housing prices of any North American city, topping San Francisco and San Diego. Toronto ranked fourth ahead of Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, DC. Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa and Edmonton all ranked among the 20 priciest North American cities alongside Seattle, Miami and Chicago.

As disturbing as the numbers are, average housing prices do not tell the whole story. Just as inequality widens the gap between the rich and poor, the great burden of housing affordability falls hardest on the members of the working class and the even larger class of service workers who together make up two-thirds of the workforce.

Just as inequality widens the gap between the rich and poor, the great burden of housing affordability falls hardest
on the members of the working class and the even larger class of service workers who together
make up two-thirds of the workforce.”

That’s the key finding coming from research I’ve been conducting on urban housing markets with my colleagues Charlotta Mellander, Karen King, and our Martin Prosperity Institute team. The analysis, which we have conducted for more than 350 metros in the United States and 47 metros in Canada, looks at the relationship between housing costs and income for these three classes of workers. On the one side are workers in the knowledge economy in fields like science and technology who are generally highly skilled and paid. Business, law, healthcare and the creative class fall into that group as well, though income varies significantly for the latter group. These workers comprise roughly a third of the workforce, climbing to as much as 40 percent in some metros. On the other side are the declining number of people in the working class, who make up roughly 20 percent of the workforce, and the rapidly rising ranks of the even lower paid service class.

Our research uses statistical correlation analysis to examine the relationship between wages and housing costs. Our results are preliminary, and it’s worth remembering that correlation is not causation and it points only to an association between two variables. The broad story that emerges is that rising urban housing prices are creating a small set of winners and a much larger set of losers. This came through loud and clear in our initial research on the United States and its more than 350 metro areas. 

Urban economists sometimes argue that everyone benefits from the higher wages offered in big cities. This is true up to a point. Yes, wages on average are higher in these places for everyone, including the working and service classes. The problem is, these higher averages are largely a product of the significantly higher wages paid to some workers in the creative class. Members of the two less advantaged classes do not make nearly enough to keep up – their increased wages are far from sufficient to offset housing costs. Rather than benefitting from the higher wages offered in these cities, the two-thirds of all workers who are members of the service and working classes are in fact worse off. 

Similar findings came through in our analysis of 47 Canadian cities and metro areas. Again, we found a close connection between wages and housing costs. And just like in the United States, the correlation between housing costs and wages is consistent across all three of the major classes. As urban economics suggests, the greater productivity brought on by clustering in these places raises wages across the board and higher wages enable people to pay more for housing. 

But, and this is a big but, this rosy connection breaks down once we look at the economic situations of the members of the three major classes once they’ve paid for housing. The creative class continues to make out alright – the correlation between housing costs and the amount of money they have left over after paying for housing remains positive. But the supposed benefits of higher wages evaporate for the service and working classes once we take the higher costs of housing into account. The amount of income left over for the service and working classes after paying for housing is essentially the same as they would have in any city across Canada. So any and all of their wage gains from living in a larger, more productive metro are eaten up by higher housing costs. 

This is not as bad as the United States, where those correlations are negative and significant – the working and service classes are actually worse off in larger, more productive cities than they would be in other places. Still, the high cost of housing in Canada’s priciest metros takes a bigger chunk of the earnings of its least advantaged people. While Canada’s creative class does better, the other two classes see any wage gains eaten up by the higher cost of housing. 

Ultimately, the clustering of talented and ambitious people in big cities is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is the source of the innovation and productivity gains that powers economic growth. But on the other, rising housing prices mean its rewards disproportionally flow to advantaged knowledge workers and the creative class, with the remaining 66 percent falling further behind. 

Canada and its cities would be wise to take action to mitigate the increasing tensions pitting rising housing costs and worsening affordability – not to mention increased inequality – against the very clustering force that powers economic growth. To do so requires addressing this issue on three fronts. 

The first is a major commitment among all levels of government to building more affordable housing in the urban cores of its major cities. This means a major reset in thinking, away from suburban sprawl, toward zoning and building codes and a more general growth strategy that encourages the development of denser, more clustered urban housing for all classes and income groups. 

The second is an upgrade to service class jobs through an increase to the local minimum wage, putting it in line with the local cost of living, while making a major effort to improve the productivity and pay of service class jobs, the fastest growing jobs sector. 

The third is investment in transit instead of roads in order to create new corridors for clustered development. 

In essence, solving Canada’s urban housing crisis requires more, not less, urbanism but a new kind of urbanism from which all classes, all workers and all people can afford and benefit. 

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