"We clearly need to do more on the homelessness front," Heffernan says. "One of my key current interests is the use of a rights-based approach to address homelessness and the lack of adequate housing. This fellowship will allow me to research the right to housing in other countries and to analyze how those strategies might apply in Canada. And I'll work directly with individuals and organizations who may have a role to play."

Tracy Heffernan

Heffernan will study the ways in which the Charter has already been used to advance social and economic rights, and will create a new directed research course for students at Osgoode Hall. Her fellowship will culminate in a symposium next year, at which an international group of experts will consider potential next steps towards establishment of a right to housing in Canada.

Osgoode students participating in the new course will focus on the root causes of homelessness and inadequate housing, and on how the law might be used to address these issues. Heffernan will also provide workshops and guest lectures during her fellowship. Law students will be exposed to issues of poverty and homelessness and will be encouraged to consider what role they can play as lawyers.

Osgoode Hall Dean Lorne Sossin says the law school looks forward to partnering in the advancement of this distinct stream of Charter scholarship. "The Charter has had a profound impact, but its role in developing social rights is in its infancy," he says. "While at Osgoode, Tracy is going to explore the concept of a positive Charter right to adequate housing, one of the most significant social challenges we face."

Heffernan says that improved access-to-justice, which is a central aspect of the LFO's mandate,  is very much among the potential benefits she sees a rights-based approach delivering. "Housing is fundamental to people's ability to work, to raise families, to engage with their communities - as well as to make use of the legal system," she says.

Community Leadership in Justice Fellowships are one of several LFO granting programs, and one or more have been awarded annually since 2006. They harness the potential of community-academia links to advance justice-related and educational objectives. Fellows are typically leading experts and innovators. Joint applications from public interest groups and prospective host academic institutions are invited each spring.

For more University news, photos and videos, visit the homepage.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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On Monday, Oct. 17, Jeffrey Simpson (right), The Globe and Mail's award-winning national affairs columnist, will be the keynote speaker at the official launch of Tax Expenditures: State of the Art, a new book edited by Osgoode Professors Lisa Philipps, Neil Brooks and Jinyan Li. He will introduce the book, which presents recent research on tax expenditures and their role in the fiscal and public policy systems of the 34 countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Within the pages of Tax Expenditures: State of the Art, contributors from the Canada, United States, Australia and England offer new data and interdisciplinary perspectives on the definition, distributional effects and politics of tax expenditures, and the use of tax expenditures to advance policy agendas relating to the environment, housing, health and fitness, and retirement savings.

The event, which is free and open to the University community, will take place from 12:30 to 2pm in 1002 Osgoode Hall Law School, Ignat Kaneff Building. A light lunch will be served. To help with planning, organizers request that you RSVP by e-mail to Inbal Marcovitch, research coordinator, Osgoode Hall Law School.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Titled "Living in 91��ɫ Region: Our Community Check-up", the report presents context indicators for 12 issue areas and summarizes the opinions of more than 1,000 91��ɫ Region residents who attended focus groups and completed an online survey between March and June 2011. The project is part of a national initiative covering 22 Canadian communities.

The report provides baseline indicators and resident perceptions of how well the region's communities are faring in key quality of life areas such as learning, health, housing and the environment. It emphasizes the importance of connections in an area encompassing some 1,756 square kilometres of rural, forested and urban landscape and concludes that 91��ɫ Region is a healthy community.

“91��ɫ has been pleased to be part of this important project in 91��ɫ Region,” said Robert Haché, vice-president research & innovation at 91��ɫ. “This report will provide a baseline against which our knowledge mobilization and social innovation initiatives can be measured. We will now have the ability to describe the difference that research is making in the lives of our local communities.”

Staff from 91��ɫ's KMb Unit served on the project steering committee to support the strategic and operational objectives of the report. David Dewitt, former assistant vice-president research, served as the University's representative on the project's leadership council, which provided strategic oversight around the development, rollout and sustainability of the project. 91��ɫ alumna Marie Murnaghan (PhD '10) contributed to the project by seeking and analyzing data in the 12 indicator areas.

“This report, based on research and data as well as the experiences and voices of 91��ɫ Region residents, holds great potential in mobilizing action around the human services provision,” said Michael Johnny, 91��ɫ's knowledge mobilization manager. “The KMb Unit at 91��ɫ will continue to work with leaders and decision makers, using this report, to help support informed decision making on important issues to all residents of 91��ɫ Region.”

The report found that 91��ɫ Region residents have great pride in their communities, whether they are long-time residents or newcomers, but years of sustained growth – and the prospect of much more to come in the future – have created pressures in two key areas that require urgent attention.

The first area, subtitled Getting Around, highlights that infrastructure and services – and most importantly public transit – must keep pace with growth so people are able to move conveniently and efficiently within 91��ɫ Region and connect to neighbouring communities.

The second priority, subtitled Housing, asserts that there be more affordable choices and supports for people in emergency situations.

To these two priority issues the report adds a third that speaks of the need to build awareness and to better communicate 91��ɫ Region’s existing strengths. The issue, subtitled Navigating Existing Resources, highlights the importance of ensuring that people know what services and programs already exist in the region and how to access them.

The Living in 91��ɫ Region Vital Signs report is part of the Vital Signs national initiative comprised of annual community check-ups that are conducted by 22 community foundations across Canada to measure the vitality of communities. The project received funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

The full report can be downloaded from the �ɱ�������ٱ�.��

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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“You can’t tell people the way to go is to own property,” said Roger Keil, who is also director of the University’s City Institute. “The attitude has to change. We have to move away from the thought that rental housing is for lower-class people.”

With a large revitalization project such as Lawrence Heights, Keil said the key thing to keep in mind is how to balance needs and wants.

“The housing area is dilapidated,” he said. “The need part is putting in new windows, making upgrades, but also for landlords to treat residents in housing better. Toronto has an official plan and wants to make it a denser city. The problem is the want part. Other interests that want housing in that area really drive the process. With Regent Park, the whole place was torn down to create change in population and change in those areas. They tear the place down, kick inhabitants out, and when shiny new buildings are built, as far as the old residents go, either the rent is too high or they feel uncomfortable living there now with the new population and new class structure. This is a given. We know this is going to happen.”

Keil noted several ways to “soften the blow” to help ensure mixed-income neighbourhoods would succeed, including a guaranteed quota of low-income housing, rental attitude changes and creation of social institutions within those communities. “The question is how to manage it and not make it into a catastrophe,” he said. “Housing is a tiny aspect. We need schools, community centres, religious institutions that support the community there so we don’t ghettoize them in the new housing. Mobility is a major issue. It needs to be built into the renovation project and that’s why things like Transit City are so important.”

Ute Lehrer, professor in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Environmental Studies and member of the City Institute, said the reason why not all residents return is mainly due to cost. “To relocate costs money,” she said. “People can’t really afford relocation twice. Then there is the issue of social networks with their kids. You have to take them out of their old school, put them in a new one, and if you move back, put them back in the old school. Employment situations might have changed. They might feel uncomfortable in their new environment, rubbing shoulders with people who they have very little in common with. There needs to be subsidies and guaranteed rental space, which needs to be implemented and politically supported.”

The Global Suburbanisms Project is funded by the (SSHRC).

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Take a glimpse into someone’s life that is otherwise invisible to most, wrote in a story about the groundbreaking, web-based work Out My Window, by the National Film Board of Canada, that offers glimpses of lives within housing developments:

Zanillya Maria Farrell is a musician and the daughter of the recently deceased singer Bobby Farrell of the disco group Boney M. Many would label her part of the huge, immigrant community in a southeast corner of Amsterdam and stop there. But her story, although unique, symbolizes the dramatic changes happening in cities around the world.In the groundbreaking, Web-based work Out My Window by the National Film Board of Canada, Farrell’s story is one of 13 offering glimpses of lives within otherwise anonymous housing developments.

. . .

[Director Katerina] Cizek and [NFB producer Gerry] Flahive are also collaborating with academic research on how cities are changing, such as the multiyear at 91��ɫ’s City Institute, which looks at how cities have inverted: The suburbs are now the lower-income peripheries and the inner city is the wealthier urban core.

Many people in this changing suburban periphery “don’t have cars. They’re not stereotypically suburban. ... They are invisible, to some extent politically invisible. But they are also physically invisible because they are not living in Chinatown or Little Italy. They are living in these anonymous high-rise blocks,” Flahive says.

“And that’s a really good place for documentaries,” he adds. “The overall Highrise project is not about architecture and urban planning. Primarily, it’s about how people live. The attempt is to peel back some of those stereotypes.”

The individual segments for Out My Window were made by local photographers and crews, with Cizek often directing the segments from thousands of kilometres away in Toronto via Skype, e-mails and phone calls.

Yet, for all of its emphasis on technology, Cizek and Flahive are actually going for something far older: A non-linear way of telling the story of people’s lives in the lower-income high-rises, doing so in the way people in the real world perceive things, in small dollops of information, rather than regular, documentary-length stories.

The Global Suburbanisms Project is led by Professor Roger Keil in the Faculty of Environmental Studies and funded by the (SSHRC).

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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That’s contrary to what most Canadians believe, says Raphael in his new book , which looks at who stays healthy, who gets sick and why. It’s written with the goal of educating the informed Canadian, as well as university students.

Most people think luck, treatment options and lifestyle choices shape whether they are healthy or not. After all, that is the current mantra – eating better and exercising will lead to a healthier existence – a mantra that Canadians have wholeheartedly internalized. But that’s only part of the equation, and not the biggest part, says Raphael, a professor in 91��ɫ's School of Health Policy & Management in the Faculty of Health.

“Decades of research and hundreds of studies in Canada and elsewhere tell a different story: the primary factors that shape the health and well-being of Canadians – the factors that will give us longer, better lives – are to be found not in those much-discussed areas, but rather in the actual living conditions that Canadians experience on a daily basis,” says Raphael in About Canada: Health and Illness.

These factors include whether people are wealthy or poor, employed or not, working conditions, access to quality education, health and social services, and the basics of food and affordable housing. These social determinants “are crucial factors in the health and well-being of Canadians,” he says.

“Contrary to the assumption that we have personal control over these factors, in most cases these living conditions are – for better or worse – imposed upon us in the normal course of everyday life.”

Left: Dennis Raphael

That’s in large part because of the policies, regulations and laws enacted by governments at all levels, which influence employment income, family benefits and social assistance, as well as the quality and availability of affordable housing, health and social services, and recreational opportunities. That includes “what happens when Canadians lose their jobs during economic downturns such as the one that Canada began experiencing in 2008,” says Raphael.

“Governments also determine whether our children have access to affordable and high-quality child care and better-quality schools, the working conditions that we experience, and whether as seniors we receive levels of public pensions that allow us to live in dignity.”

Raphael wants to see changes in public policy that will affect Canadians’ health in a positive way. Through About Canada: Health and Illness, he wants the average Canadian to understand the role social determinants play in shaping health and what can be done to improve the situation through better public policies.

Raphael is the editor of , co-editor of and author of . He served as an adviser to the California Newsreel documentary series and the Deveaux Babin Productions Canadian documentary .

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Debate ran late into the night at this week’s council meeting and drew a series of eleventh-hour deputations in support of freezing development in the foodbelt, a 2,000-hectare swath of farmland stretching north of Major Mackenzie Drive toward the Oak Ridges Moraine.

But councillors ultimately voted 7-6 in favour of a staff-recommended model that would contain 60 per cent of new development within the current urban boundary and allow the rest to spread north.

“I feel bamboozled. I feel that democracy took a black eye,” said , an environmental studies professor at 91��ɫ who has launched an academic alliance for agriculture. The compromise, he said, “is sort of like, OK, we know we’re not doing the right thing, but just [we’re going] to sugarcoat it so you have this little morsel."

The complete article is .

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer.

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shows why these factors are so important for health and documents the state of living conditions in Canada in an accessible manner for the Canadian public. The report finds these conditions are deteriorating, with serious ramifications for the quality and longevity of Canadians' lives, and outlines specific ways that the situation can be improved. The report is free to the public to read or download. Printed copies are also available to .

"Our key message is that the health of Canadians is much less determined by the health-care system than we typically think. Much more important are public policies that influence our living conditions," says Dennis Raphael, a professor in 91��ɫ's School of Health Policy & Management in the Faculty of Health and the report's co-author.

Raphael and Juha Mikkonen, a visiting scholar at 91��ɫ, explain in everyday language and with compelling graphics how Canadians' health is shaped by how much income and wealth they have, whether or not they are employed and, if so, the working conditions they experience. They pull together a wide range of research to show how health is powerfully influenced by Canadians' ability to obtain quality education, food and housing, among other factors.

Contrary to the popular belief that Canada is a caring nation with strong supports for its citizens, the report shows that Canada has one of the worst records among wealthy, developed nations in providing its citizens with the conditions necessary for health. These supports are eroding with significant effects on Canadians' health, says Raphael.

Left: Dennis Raphael

"This is not a storyline that's familiar to most Canadians. We're still stuck in those glory days where Canada really was one of the best places in the world to live. Sadly, that is no longer the case. What's frightening is that many of these aspects are completely beyond any one individual's control."

For example, new immigrants have difficulty getting accreditation for their skills, and are forced into service jobs where they can barely afford to feed their families. This leads to a host of problems that directly affect health and overall quality of life. "It's all interrelated. It's time to act on these issues," Raphael says.

Another striking example is found in maps that show a clear correspondence between poverty levels, prevalence of adult-onset diabetes and concentration of visible minorities in Toronto neighbourhoods.

Right: Juha Mikkonen

The report was inspired by the 2003 World Health Organization document Social Determinants of Health: The Solid Facts. Raphael hopes it will also spur the public into action. "It really is oriented toward building a social movement," he says.

The report provides concrete recommendations for improving the situation. For example, with regard to the increasing occurrence of hunger in Canada, it recommends increasing minimum wages and social assistance rates to the level where an adequate diet is affordable and that government assure healthy foods, such as milk, fruit and foods high in fibre, are affordable. It also recommends there be a provision of affordable housing and child care that would reduce other family expenses and leave more money for acquiring an adequate diet.

Sobering statistics cited by the report include:

• 15 per cent of Canadian children are living in poverty, putting Canada at a rank of 20th out of 30 of the world's wealthiest nations as defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
• Only 17 per cent of Canadian families have access to regulated child care. Canada ranked last among 25 wealthy, developed nations in meeting various early childhood development objectives.
• Canada is amongst the lowest in its coverage of total health-care costs. Medicare covers only 70 per cent of total health-care costs, giving Canada a rank of 22nd of 30 OECD nations for public coverage of health-care costs.
• Canada is among the nations with the greatest gap between men's and women's earnings. Canada ranks 19th of 22 OECD nations in reducing the earnings gap between men and women.
• Over 40 per cent of Canadians with disabilities are not in the labour force, forcing many of them to rely upon social assistance benefits. Canada ranks 27th of 29 in public spending on disability-related issues.

Raphael, who teaches in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Health, has researched and written widely on these issues. His recent publications include , , and Health Promotion and Quality of Life in Canada: Essential Readings.

Mikkonen is a vice-president of the European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN) Finland and a member of the executive committee of the EAPN. He has held positions in decision-making bodies at the University of Helsinki, the Finnish Student Health Services and the Finnish Youth Co-operation Allianssi, an umbrella organization for more than 100 Finnish youth non-governmental organizations.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Rochon's article quotes Roger Keil, professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, director of the , and director of the City Institute at 91��ɫ. Here's a snippet:

Itakes only 20 stops on the SkyTrain for the look of Vancouver to morph into that of Surrey. Heading east into the Fraser Valley, Vancouver’s preened and primped metrosexual face – think Pierce Brosnan crossed with Nelly Furtado – loses the chiselled jaw and phosphorescent pink it gets from all that excess skiing and spa luxuriating. By the time the train crosses over the Fraser River, the face of the commuter, exhausted from a day’s work and anxious to arrive home in one of the nation’s largest suburbs, has grown slack and winter grey.Yet even as the world’s attention is locked on Vancouver and the unfolding of the Winter , there’s a new glow spreading across the raw face of its eastern neighbour. The Olympics may deepen the divide between the rich, resort-like feel of Vancouver and the blossoming edge city, but Surrey is now officially Metro Vancouver’s second downtown core. And what was once pegged as a sleeping monster of sprawl is being transformed, slowly but surely, into an urban shire.

...

Roger Keil, director of 91��ɫ's City Institute, has just completed a major research project on suburbs and new forms of density. He says the enormous land mass of edge cities such as Surrey or Mississauga demands separate nodes of development, transportation links and sports and entertainment complexes.

He has witnessed some of the pressures first-hand: “You can see the tension building around 91��ɫ. What was once an empty, barren field in the 1990s turns out now to be one of the most networked places in the [Toronto area]. That means a GO [transit] station, subway, buses and Canada’s first urban national park. ... So rather than looking at it as a marginal area to which you move because you haven’t enough money to live downtown, on the contrary it is becoming a very attractive option.”

Visit the Globe & Mail to .

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Housing is not only a “completely undiversified” investment, in the words of Milevsky: it’s also a highly leveraged one, say other observers. While this aspect magnifies gains in house prices it also magnifies losses, so that relatively small fluctuations can wipe out all of the owner’s equity. Indeed, the value of the house could even fall below the value of the mortgage – as millions of US citizens have discovered since 2007. Renting reduces exposure to this scenario.

For all 11 reasons, click .

Republished courtesy of .

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