The Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program (RRAP) was announced by the Government of Canada in the spring of 1973 and became operational the following year. It came about because of the dual recognition that the existing housing stock represented an important national asset that needed to be preserved, and that a significant portion of this stock was substandard and occupied by households unable to afford necessary repairs. Over the following 26 years, more than 600 000 dwellings, mostly comprised of self-contained homeowner and rental units, but also a good number of beds in hostels, dormitories, special care facilities and rooming houses, were repaired with RRAP assistance across all regions and areas of the country. During this time, RRAP demonstrated great versatility in adapting to the priorities of the day in achieving a broad range of public objectives from improving the housing conditions of low-income Canadians, neighourhood improvement and employment generation, to meeting the special needs of persons with disabilities and the homeless. This history is divided into two main parts. The first recounts the evolution of RRAP from its inception to the present day. The second part explores the evolution of critical aspects of RRAP related to need, its design, management and accomplishments, and concludes with an epilogue which reviews reasons for RRAP's durability and explores the need for targeted housing rehabilitation programs in the future.

Social housing - public, non-profit, or co-operative - was once a part of Canada's urban success story. After years of neglect and many calls for affordable homes and solutions to homelessness, housing is once again an important issue. In Still Renovating, Greg Suttor tells the story of the rise and fall of Canadian social housing policy. Focusing on the main turning points through the past seven decades, and the forces that shaped policy, this volume makes new use of archival sources and interviews, pays particular attention to institutional momentum, and describes key housing programs. The analysis looks at political change, social policy trends, housing market conditions, and game-changing decisions that altered the approaches of Canadian governments, their provincial partners, and the local agencies they supported. Reinterpreting accounts written in the social housing heyday, Suttor argues that the 1970s shift from low-income public housing to community-based non-profits and co-ops was not the most significant change, highlighting instead the tenfold expansion of activity in the 1960s and the collapse of social housing as a policy priority in the 1990s. As housing and neighbourhood issues continue to flare up in municipal, provincial, and national politics, Still Renovating is a valuable resource on Canada’s distinctive legacy in affordable housing.

This book provides a comparative perspective on housing and planning policies affecting the future of cities, focusing on people- and place-based outcomes using the nexus of planning, design and policy. A rich mosaic of case studies features good practices of city-led strategies for affordable housing provision, as well as individual projects capitalising on partnerships to build mixed-income housing and revitalise neighbourhoods. Twenty chapters provide unique perspectives on diversity of approaches in eight countries and 12 cities in Europe, Canada and the USA. Combining academic rigour with knowledge from critical practice, the book uses robust empirical analysis and evidence-based case study research to illustrate the potential of affordable housing partnerships for mixed-income, socially inclusive neighbourhoods as a model to rebuild cities. Cities and Affordable Housing is an essential interdisciplinary collection on planning and design that will be of great interest to scholars, urban professionals, architects, planners and policy-makers interested in housing, urban planning and city building.

What are the major issues confronting social policy-makers today? What theoretical perspectives shape our thinking about the causes of social problems and how we should respond? What can we do to influence decision makers about which policy choice to make? In this completely revised and updated edition of "Canadian Social Policy," a new generation of social policy analysts discusses these important questions. Readers who are interested in discovering the current policy debates, and who want to understand the policy-making process at various levels of government as well as how they can influence the process and assess whether policies are working, will find this book invaluable.

The size of Canadian households has been declining since at least the 1880s. Miron compares this trend to patterns of household size in England and the United States and argues that postwar changes in household formation in Canada were the result of several forces including the postwar baby boom, increased longevity, changes in marriage pattern, rising incidence of divorce, increased household affluence, and new forms of government assistance to housing. While aggregate growth in population, families, and households helps to explain why more housing was necessary, it does not explain changes in the kind of houses desired. Miron discusses changes in available housing stock as well as changes in structural type such as the great apartment boom of the late 1960s and the re-emergence of owner occupancy in the late 1970s. The types of data available for measuring change in the stock and sources of error in housing data are also analyzed. One of the books most important contributions is an annotated synthesis of national trends in household formation and housing demand, derived from Statistics Canada census data, and accompanied by an insightful analysis of the relation of these trends to housing stock evolution. This is the only available detailed study of these topics in the Canadian context.