National Housing Day 2022 offered community with an insightful exploration of housing unaffordability and homelessness in Saint John, New Brunswick, particularly highlighting the unique challenges faced by a mid-sized city, by centering community voices through a World Cafe. World Cafe is a form of research which uses appreciative inquiry, encouraging participants to share their thoughts and experiences on the housing crisis to generate discussion and solution. We collected participants’ observations through notetaking and analyzed them to highlight the key themes emerging from these important conversations.
Throughout the past years, housing unaffordability in small and mid-sized cities has become a growing concern for many households. The NB Housing Summit: Solutions to Promote Housing Affordability in the Mid-sized City of Saint John, New Brunswick, the 2022 National Housing Day event, explored housing affordability in the Saint John region through a World Cafe with inputs from 85 community stakeholders. The objective of this event was to examine locally driven and proposed solutions to the current housing and homelessness crises in Saint John—a project that is essential particularly due to the lack of research that focuses on small and mid-sized cities in Canada.
Some of the key themes that emerged from these conversations were the need for increased collaboration and relationship building, especially cross-sector partnerships. Participants also highlighted the importance of relationship-building within the communities; as one participant said: “Relationships and neighborhood building cause people to think less about themselves and more about those who need support in their area.”
Stakeholders also identified tax reform and wage increases as a critical step towards housing affordability, emphasizing the low wages and income inequality at the root of the housing crisis. Furthermore, tenant protection and investing in non-profit housing were both identified as important approaches to achieving long-term, affordable housing.
To conclude, the findings of the 2022 NB Housing Summit highlight a strong community desire to find solutions for the housing crisis and grow the supply of affordable housing. The participants highlighted the importance of collaboration, inclusivity, and legislative reform which were all shared by an understanding of the circumstances many Saint John households find themselves in.
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Ghazal (she/her) is a Bachelor of Health (Honours) student at UNB. Her research interests are in the social determinants of health and the intersection of housing and reproductive health.
