Shared Foundations: First Nations-Nonprofit Housing Partnerships
First Nations communities are experiencing a housing emergency, and standardized public and private sector models and programs are failing to meet housing need.
As a result, First Nations communities across Canada are increasingly exploring partnerships with nonprofit housing organizations such as Habitat for Humanity’s local affiliates in order to meet community-identified housing goals. These partnerships are promising because they can prioritize affordability and reliability while also supporting secondary social and economic aims like capacity building.
To guide collaboration and maximize impact, better understanding is needed of the opportunities, challenges, relationships and unique contextual considerations of this type of work. Shared Foundations, a collaboration between Habitat for Humanity Canada and TDL, aims to better understand what works well in these partnerships and how they might be improved in the future.
The project began by asking:
What is the current state of First Nations-nonprofit housing development partnerships in Canada? How effective have these partnerships been in generating community-led housing solutions? How are First Nations-nonprofit housing partnerships and program models working well, and where is change needed?
Who is involved?
Habitat for Humanity Canada and Together Design Lab are partners in this ongoing research.
What is TDL’s role?
TDL will conduct engagement with housing professionals working on either side of partnerships and complete an environmental scan of academic and secondary literature.
What types of engagement will occur?
Survey of Housing Professionals
To better understand the impact of partnerships, challenges, and opportunities for improvement, TDL will design a survey to capture qualitative data about experiences of housing professionals within First Nations-Nonprofit partnerships.
Group and Individual Sharing
TDL will host group and individual knowledge sharing sessions for housing professionals working at several scales (community, regional, national, and international) to reflect on experiences relevant to First Nations-Nonprofit housing partnerships.
What will be learned?
Findings about the outcomes of partnerships in communities, obstacles to success, and opportunities to enhance effectiveness will be shared with First Nations, nonprofit, and government audiences to support the success of First Nations-nonprofit housing partnerships, program models and future research.
Project Partners:
Habitat for Humanity Canada
Funding Acknowledgement:
The Shared Foundations research partnership is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.