TISGB Presents: How Community Wealth Is Creating Affordable Housing
The Institute of Southern Georgian Bay’s Social Finance and Affordable Housing Group continues its online series on community wealth and affordable housing with a talk on April 15, 2026.
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The Institute of Southern Georgian Bay’s Social Finance and Affordable Housing Group continues our online series with a third event on how our community wealth can leverage more of the affordable housing our communities need building series.
In this event we will showcase examples of communities successfully leveraging local wealth and assets to create affordable housing.
On Wednesday, April 15, 2026 from 4:30 to 6:00 pm, we will hear from 3 new speakers.
Mike Bultius from the Ottawa Community Land Trust will speak to how his community is using both a land trust and a community financing fund - built through local investment - to increase the supply of affordable housing.
Dave Harder from Releven will share this organization’s work responding to the considerable number of faith communities leveraging both buildings and assets to create affordable housing.
Ryan Deska, newly at the Community Foundation Grey-Bruce, will speak about new efforts to create our very own community development corporation to support more affordable housing right here in this region.
Register today to access this discussion on Zoom:
The purpose of this series and our speakers sharing real-life examples is to support our local learning. Now more than ever we need to imagine the strategies that retain wealth in our communities and direct it to local requirements — especially to secure affordable housing.
Event one in our series explained the obstacles with traditional financing and what has happened when we rely only on local government development policy and the private market to deliver the range of affordable housing we need for the people who live and work here.
This is not just a local problem, the current system across Canada is failing to deliver housing that is affordable for all households, especially those supported by wage-earners our business sectors rely on.
The Whole Community Approach to Housing – our locally developed cross-sectoral strategy – was presented along with the rich experience of other communities learning how to leverage Community Wealth to create affordable “non-market” housing is an important strategy.
Here is the Event 1 video link.
In Event 2 of this series, our speakers explored growing ideas of community wealth evolving in Canada, and the practical and legal mechanics of how a system-changing economic model can redirect wealth and control of assets back into the community, as well as practical tools that communities are using to solve for enough affordable housing.
In our Affordable Housing Toolkit, you can learn more about:
The advantages of a collaborative regional view to achieve scale.
How communities can use new organizational mechanisms such as land trusts, co-ops, faith-based community ownership and community development organizations
How municipal development practices and progressive policy can help.
The hitch with new provincial and federal support for smaller communities like ours.
Just what ‘non-market’ housing is and why more of that helps to solve the housing crisis.
Join us on Zoom for part 3 of our series and learn from those who are actually leveraging community wealth to solve their affordability crisis. Bring your questions and thoughts.
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