Recession and Stimulus Spending: A Preliminary Examination of Stimulus Spending on Affordable Housing in Ontario - CPRN Research Report | December 2009 - Arif Jinha Student Intern

The purposes of this report are (a) to demonstrate the significance of the housing affordability problem in the financial crisis; (b) to investigate possible impacts of the recession and the implementation of the housing stimulus; and (c) to discuss the policy implications of the crisis, recession and stimulus for affordable/social housing in Ontario going forward. [...] Despite the author’s immersion in the research project over four months, the experience was entirely humbling in terms of the level of knowledge, ideas and intensity of the discussion at the grassroots. [...] Attending the consultation allowed the author to reflect on the validity of the findings and recommendations of this study, and the author highly recommends community-based participatory research in the future. [...] The deepening of the Cold War, the failures of state socialism and, finally, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 meant that by the close of the 20th century, the centre had shifted toward free market capitalism and away from government involvement in the economy. [...] Following the logic of Quigley and Raphael’s (2001) indicators of homelessness, the rise in homelessness in the past two decades is explained by the rise in the price of housing and the decline in money that low-income households have available for housing.