Housing and Homelessness
Tenants engaged through public legal information sessions.
We work with community partners and collaboratives to support housing solutions in the community. We currently provide coordination support to the Women’s Housing Planning Collaborative and the Street Youth Planning Collaborative.
Hamilton’s Housing Crisis: Financialization Overview
Financialization of rental housing in Hamilton SPRC and the Hamilton Community Legal Clinic (HCLC) jointly submitted to the National Housing Council’s Review Panel on the Financialization of Purpose...
Hamilton Post-Pandemic Emergency Shelter Size Review: Key Findings
In June 2022, the City of Hamilton Housing Services Division selected the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton to conduct a post-pandemic review of the size of the emergency shelter...
Open Letter to the City of Hamilton on the Proposed Encampment Protocol
June 30, 2023 Michelle BairdDirector of Housing ServicesCity of Hamilton71 Main St WestHamilton, ONL8P 4Y5 [via email] Dear Ms. Baird: RE: Open Letter to the City of Hamilton on the Proposed...
SPRC Submission to the Federal Housing Advocate Encampment Review
The Federal Housing Advocate has launched a review on homeless encampments as a violation of human rights in Canada. As part of the review, the Federal Housing Advocate is seeking input from people...
Hamilton-Centre tenants urgently need more protection: election candidate survey
Green and PC candidates do not respond to SPRC survey on rental housing The Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton sent a survey by email to candidates in the Hamilton Centre by-election...
Rental Housing Market Amplifies Inequality for Young Renters
Hamilton Social Landscape, Issue #30 Young renters face more challenges to finding affordable housing, according to the SPRC report from November 2022. Households led by racialized and Indigenous...
Renter Growth in Hamilton
Hamilton renter households are growing in all parts of the city. Growth of renter households across Hamilton was 11.5% from 2016 to 2021, a 5 times higher growth rate than the 2.3% growth in owner...
Hamilton’s Rental Landscape: Understanding the rental housing crisis and solutions to end it
The current rental landscape is changing, and changing fast. Highlighting data on rental housing from a variety of sources, the Social Planning and Research Council of Hamilton is publishing a...
Rents and Affordability in Hamilton and Ontario
A recent report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives shows that a minimum-wage earner would have to work 54 hours a week to afford a one bedroom apartment in Hamilton. This troubling...
Rising Eviction Rates Threatening Tenants And Affordable Housing
Tenants are being squeezed by increasing rental prices as illustrated in the previous bulletins in this series (Rents and affordability in Hamilton and Ontario and Rents in Hamilton's...
Growth In Hamilton’s Renter Households
One reason rents are increasing at higher rates recently is that the number of renters in Hamilton has increased to 68,545 households in 2016. This figure is higher than any census year since 1991,...
Rental Housing in Hamilton’s Neighbourhoods
In Canada, a full-time minimum wage worker can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only 70 out of 795 neighborhoods across the country, 9% of neighbourhoods examined in the CCPA report,...
Primary Private Rental Stock In Hamilton
The 68,545 rental dwellings in Hamilton identified in the 2016 Census can be divided into the three main types of rental units: those in private primary rental buildings, those in private secondary...
Rental Quality Concerns
The lack of new builds or reinvestment into aging rental stock in Hamilton has led to more and more tenants living in substandard housing. The Canadian Census asks renters and homeowners if their...
Not-for-profit Housing
Housing is key to social welfare, and in fact Canada now recognizes housing as a human right in legislation, but “housing is famously the shaky of ’wobbly pillar’ of the welfare state in that it is...
Hamilton’s Rental Landscape: Trends In Hamilton’s Rental Stock
Lack of new builds or reinvestment into aging rental stock in Hamilton has led to more and more tenants living in substandard housing. The Canadian Census asks renters and homeowners if their...
Out of Control Rental Housing Report
Housing affordability for tenants has reached crisis levels in Hamilton and other Ontario communities. With less than a week left in the provincial election campaign, all political parties need to...
Out of Control: Ontario’s acute rental housing crisis – Lessons from Hamilton and Quebec City
Out of Control examines differences between Hamilton and Quebec City’s rental markets. It finds that Quebec has both stronger tenant protection policies and greater supply of new rental housing....
How’s the Weather Now? Women’s Homelessness in Hamilton
Despite a significant increase in funding over the last five years to address women’s homelessness in Hamilton, the crisis persists with seemingly no end in sight. Funded by: Federal government’s...
Intergenerational Trauma and Aboriginal Homelessness: An Introduction for Service Providers and Community Members
Published: September 2017This report explores what intergenerational trauma is, how it relates to historical treatment of Aboriginal Peoples, and how the effects persist to this day, including...