Participants of the workshop first had the opportunity to learn about the context of the study and the findings through presentations by SWCHC and Cahdco. The Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust then gave a presentation on their experience, lessons learned, and best practices on rooming house acquisition in Toronto. In the second half of the workshop, participants had the opportunity to break off into smaller groups for a more in-depth, collaborative exercise to provide feedback and ideas on one of five specific topics related to rooming houses.

Each group shared some interesting ideas generated from the discussion of their topic, as follows:

• Support Services
  • Engage rooming house tenants in the stewardship/programming of services in their building to foster a sense of responsibility and prevent conflict, and seek smaller grants for this

• Design Ideas
  • Supportive micro-suites are comparable to today’s condos; find synergies to rebrand them and start to erase the stigma of traditional rooming house models

• Government Policy
  • Include rooming houses and micro-suites in Action Ottawa RFPs and Prioritize affordable housing applications in site plan control and building permit processes

• Financing
  • Create an acquisition fund to allow quick purchases and act as a bridge for government funding

• Acquisition
  • Set up a community land trust

The workshop closed with a “Where do you Stand” exercise which connected like-minded participants based on their support and enthusiasm for the different topics.

Do you have any creative solutions when it comes to improving rooming house acquisition and micro-suite development? Contact us if you want to get involved in furthering any of the topics above!