Hamilton

What We Heard Report

Leigh Bursey

Brockville City Councillor

Leigh Bursey is a current Brockville city councillor. Mr. Bursey is the host of Critical Thinking, an author, musician, motivational speaker and poverty activist.

Margie Carlson

Inter Faith Homes Group (Executive Director)

Margie Carlson joined the Inter Faith Homes Group in 2018 bringing her substantial background in social and affordable housing to one of Ontario’s larger community-based non-profit housing corporations. For over 25 years, she has undertaken housing policy, research and best practices work for all three levels of government and the non-profit sector. Her in-depth knowledge of housing programs, legislation, corporate structures and operations matched with her exposure to international best practices in community housing has given her a unique background in Canada. She has worked with non-profit boards, published reports, spoken at conferences and been a regular presence at ministerial working tables. In 2015, she worked with Senator Art Eggleton, Ed Clark and the other members of the Mayor’s Task Force on Toronto Community Housing to help create a vision for transformative change for Canada’s largest social housing provider. Margie is also the first Canadian to be accredited as a Chartered Member by the UK-based Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH).

Jeff Neven

Indwell (Executive Director)

Jeff serves as the Executive Director of Indwell, one of Ontario’s fastest growing supportive housing charities. For 18 years, Jeff and the Indwell team have grown from serving just seven people to providing homes for over 550 people with an additional 400 units in construction/development. Today, Indwell is also Canada’s largest developer of multi-residential passive housing units, a rigorous voluntary standard for energy efficiency in a building. Jeff is an established community leader actively involved in local neighbourhood engagement, active transportation, homelessness prevention, his local church, and remote indigenous youth recreation/employment. He holds a Master of Social Work in Community, Policy, Planning and Organizations from Wilfrid Laurier University and received the "40 Under 40" Next Generation of Hamilton Leaders Award in 2017.

Workshop Format

In broad terms, we have sought to ensure that our Café themes cover different aspects of sustainability that are regionally relevant. In Hamilton, our focus is on community housing sustainability in the context of business transformation and workforce development.

Each Café will begin in the online community, a month before the in-person event, with thought leaders contributing short posts to our blog. Providing participants with important research and information in advance of the live event and stimulating advance discussion, these blog posts will highlight the existing research being mobilized during the Cafés.

On the day, events will begin with short talks from leaders in the field, reviewing key knowledge and context in an accessible manner. The Café will begin with a moderated, forty-five (45) minute discussion among thought leaders, in a “fireside chat” format. Acting as a discussant/talk-show host, the moderator will pose questions to the thought leaders before opening the floor to questions from the audience. After this brief introduction, facilitators will lead small group discussions and activities surrounding the Café topic at hand.

Through facilitated work in small groups, each Café will culminate in the production of a concrete deliverable: a roadmap for pracademic collaboration on the topic of the Café, including the assembling of research teams to address particular components of the broader programme.

Following closing remarks from the thought leaders, each Café will conclude with individual reflection and small group planning, challenging participants to outline how they could bring the roadmap to life in their own communities. Led by the Co-Chairs, research assistants will produce summary reports of each Café, highlighting the research employed and the knowledge co-created. These reports will be compiled for dissemination to participants within one week of the workshop.

Objective

The overall outcome of Café Pracademique workshops like these is to unite public policy practitioners, academics, industry professionals, and citizens to mobilize knowledge and drive positive, lasting, ongoing policy research innovation. Participants will build new personal and professional networks in order to sustain a continuous cross-pollination of ideas across the policy community. In the process, this initiative will help bridge the gap between academia and policy makers by uniting thought leaders from both communities to build on the knowledge and expertise of all involved. Ultimately, public sector strategies will be informed by research, while academic research would be informed by practice-based results.

The workshop has four principal objectives:

To develop consensus on substantive definitions of 'resilience' and 'sustainability' as they apply to community housing.
To identify ways for providers to improve their resilience and sustainability, and measure their impacts of their initiatives.
To conceptualize how the National Housing Strategy will shape the sector.
To decide on research priorities for community housing over the next five years.

Hamilton is situated on the traditional territory of the Haudensaunee and Anishnaabeg. This territory is covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and directly adjacent to Haldiman Treaty territory.

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