Housing Complex - Project Report

Photo credit - Jordon Hon

ECOHH has been proud to partner with Taproot Edmonton on the Housing Complex project. This initiative grew from a conversation between Karen Unland of Taproot and Jim Gurnett of ECOHH over a year ago. Combining a series of interviews and verbatim Q & A's featuring people with lived experiences and a series of explanatory articles about some of the complexities of Edmonton's housing system, Housing Complex hopes to offer insights without oversimplification.

Components:

Photo credit - Jordon Hon

Vignettes: Originally titled "Snapshots from the Housing Ecosystem," a series of twelve interviews were conducted by ECOHH member Eric Rice with people whose lives intersect with housing from different perspectives. Many ECOHH members participated in an online survey in December of 2023 to help us determine which parts of the housing ecosystem we should focus on. With guidance from that survey and from stakeholders we wrapped up those interviews in September of 2024, and Jordon Hon took some amazing photos of our interviewees. We interviewed people from ECOHH member organizations and individuals outside of ECOHH. This part of the project was funded through a grant to ECOHH from the Alberta Real Estate Foundation.

A clip from Taproot's project page.

Explainers: The Taproot editorial team undertook research and conducted interviews with academics, experts, and practitioners to develop a series of articles examining housing supply, cost and accessibility, the history of publicly funded housing, renting vs. owning, Indigenous housing initiatives, tackling homelessness, and the role of Edmonton City Council. ECOHH organization and individual members again participated. These articles explored what works, what doesn't work, and what we should be looking for as we head into a municipal election in 2025.

The website that Taproot developed to house the Housing Complex is full of stories and information that is accessible and engaging. As ECOHH continues to educate and advocate for affordable housing and solutions to the homelessness crisis, we will continue to leverage our membership and expertise to help spread the word through partnerships like this.

A special thank you to Karen Unland and the Taproot team, the Alberta Real Estate Foundation, and the Policy and Communications Committee of ECOHH.