RESOURCE | Empowering Inclusion in Affordable Housing
In the last few years, the NAHC has embarked on a new venture: To create mixed market rental developments that demonstrate a new model for inclusive independent living affordable housing.
The NAHC is now housing nine adults with intellectual disabilities at Willowview Heights as part of a partnership with Inclusion Saskatchewan, with tenants receiving reduced monthly rents and dedicated, person-centric property management.
The experience has been so successful that we plan to expand this idea to future developments.
Wanting to share what we’ve learned through our experience, we recently released a community guide to Empowering Inclusion in Affordable Housing.
We hope that this account of the NAHC’s learnings will benefit others looking to change the affordable housing landscape so that it may offer more suitable and inclusive forms of housing for persons with intellectual disabilities.
The stories and learnings found in Empowering Inclusion in Affordable Housing provides professionals, community members, and other allied individuals with a resource that will aid in the development of sustainable, inclusive housing, and will serve as an inspiration to creatively problem-solve some of the most complex challenges in inclusive housing development.
The resource documents our collective learnings throughout the first year of this housing journey with the tenants and it aims to help provide some direction for others so that they, too, may work to address the housing gap for people with intellectual disabilities.
The resource offers practical solutions and real-life examples to inspire other organizations to provide homes for this demographic. We have highlighted our learnings, our tenant’s stories and experience, and some best practices for others to raise awareness about the challenges these tenants face.
We hope that sharing our experience of housing persons with disabilities will break down some of the misconceptions property managers and landlords may have as well so they can also work towards housing in a more inclusive manner.
Empowering Inclusion in Affordable Housing is publicly available to all — read the document.
We’re so grateful for the support of the Community Housing Transformation Centre (CHTC); this document wouldn’t have been possible without their support.
