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Canada’s housing co-ops meet in Victoria to celebrate 50 years, advocacy wins and new growth

Published June 06, 2018

VICTORIA, BCJune 6, 2018 /CNW/ – Over 700 housing co-op members and staff from across Canada are meeting this week in Victoria for the 50th Annual Meeting of the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada (CHF Canada).

Participants will gather from June 6 to 9 at the Victoria Conference Centre to learn, network and celebrate the recent success of their four-year advocacy campaign to protect more than 20,000 low-income households that were under threat of expiring federal subsidies.

Housing co-ops are independent housing businesses providing permanently-affordable, community-oriented homes for their members. In British Columbia, housing co-ops are home to over 65,000 people of every income level.

Besides marking this campaign victory and momentous anniversary, this meeting marks other milestones for the co-op housing movement.

  • Governments at all levels are re-engaging the housing file in light of crisis-level shortages of affordable housing with funding for co-op and non-profit housing, as seen with last year’s launch of the National Housing Strategy and recent 10-year housing plans announced by the Province of British Columbia and the City of Vancouver.
  • A special keynote plenary session on Friday morning, will feature British Columbia’s Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Selena Robinson and a panel of experts (Shachi KurlAngus ReidPaul Kershaw, Generation Squeeze; Margaret Pfoh, Aboriginal Housing Management Association) will discuss Canada’s affordable housing issues and how housing co-ops can help solve them.
  • On Saturday morning, Adam Vaughan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development (Housing and Urban Affairs) and Member of Parliament for Spadina-Fort York, will address delegates during CHF Canada’s national AGM.

“We have much to celebrate in the 50th year of Canada’s co-op housing movement, and we find ourselves at the dawn of an exciting new era,” said CHF Canada President Nicole Waldron. “With the new National Housing Strategy and with other governments and private sector partners increasingly seeing the value of expanding co-op housing, we look forward to partnering on solutions to the housing crisis.”

Other key topics of discussion for CHF Canada’s Annual Meeting will be resolutions to establish a shared strategy for growth, including using $1 million from CHF Canada reserves to support new development. Other resolutions address Canada’s opioid crisis, and Reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous Peoples.

For more information on the annual meeting, go to https://annualmeeting.chfcanada.coop/

CHF Canada’s Annual Meeting also includes education workshops, a national business meeting and tourist activities designed to give conference participants a taste of Victoria.

CHF Canada is the national voice of the Canadian co-operative housing movement. Its members include over 900 non-profit housing co-operatives and other organizations across Canada. More than a quarter of a million Canadians live in housing co-ops, in every province and territory.

For further information:

Scott Jackson, Program Manager, National Communications, 778.227.3864 (mobile), sjackson@chfcanada.coop; Douglas Wong, Program Manager, Policy and Government Relations, 613.293.0142 (mobile), dwong@chfcanada.coop

Related Links

www.chfcanada.coop


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