Housing Assistance, Neighbourhood Change and Residential Mobility

How do changing household and neighbourhood dynamics influence the mobility decisions of subsidized households?

Project Director: Prentiss Dantzler

Toronto Community Housing (TCH) operates about 55,000 households across 106 of the 140 neighbourhoods in the Greater Toronto Area. While recognizing the importance of residential stability for the communities and individuals who reside in these units, the housing complexes themselves are nested within neighbourhoods that have seen rapid and profound changes over the past fifteen years. Though subsidies keep their housing costs affordable, neighbourhood change may still impact residents’ sense of place and the level of residential stability.

This project seeks to learn how changing household and neighbourhood dynamics influence the mobility decisions of subsidized households. This is the first step in a larger project to learn how neighbourhood change affects subsidized households – how they see themselves in the housing community and neighbourhood more generally and how they understand the change. This first step involves analysis of housing data provided by TCH about residential mobility in combination with census data to understand neighbourhood change.