Who We Are

Team

Events

Our mission is to accelerate evidence-based solutions that advance Canada’s National Housing Strategy to ensure every Canadian has “housing that meets their needs and that they can afford”.

Who We Are

We bring together a network of more than 30 academics from across Canada and beyond who are engaged in independent, in-depth research exploring the connections between income, housing and health.

Our non-academic partners include more than 50 organizations representing some 2,000 policymakers, housing providers and equity-seeking groups who are committed to growing Canada’s supply of safe, adequate, accessible and affordable housing.

What We Do

We work to:

Facilitate access to housing data
Connect policy makers, researchers, housing providers and people with lived experience
Identify housing research priorities
Build Canada’s housing research capacity

Director’s Message

Jim Dunn, Chair

Dept. of Health, Aging & Society
McMaster University

Canada is in the midst of a global housing crisis. Decisive action is urgently needed to mitigate the crisis and transform our housing system to ensure we can meet the housing needs of all Canadians.

The Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative (CHEC) was established because we believe that stronger research leads to evidence-based action. CHEC is an independent, university-based research and knowledge mobilization organization that shares evidence, stimulates new research and advises on strategic evidence-informed action.

At CHEC, our vision is clear:

To achieve housing solutions that meet the needs of a growing, urbanizing and aging population, maximize well-being, minimize environmental impact, accommodate diversity, strengthen public institutions, and facilitate stable and productive economies in a globalizing world context.

CHEC is funded by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) to act as the hub for the Collaborative Housing Research Network, a network of five research nodes, comprised of over one hundred researchers, aligned to themes in the National Housing Strategy (NHS).

To achieve CHEC’s vision, support the CHRN network and achieve our goals related to evidence-based action on housing, we have four streams of activity under two broad categories:

Knowledge mobilization

Join up the housing research ecosystem, connecting knowledge users to researchers, disseminating research findings, and building research receptor capacity in housing organizations
Utilize innovative knowledge mobilization tools to speed up the evidence-to-action cycle, and drive capacity building for the implementation of research insights, not just generating new ideas

Capacity building

Data capacity building: We drive users to existing housing data, stimulate the development of new housing data and indicators, and advise organizations on their data needs
Human resource capacity building: We’re working to rapidly expand Canada’s housing research and policy capacity by incentivizing new housing researchers, growing knowledge among people working in the housing sector, and drawing established researchers from other fields into housing research

We have collaborations and partnerships with housing organizations, governments, and researchers across Canada and internationally in the UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

We continue to build new partnerships with decision-makers at all levels to stimulate strategic, evidence-informed action to address the housing needs of all Canadians. Soon, we’ll be expanding our training and educational opportunities, releasing a series of new data intelligence products and launching the next season of our podcast “Fixing Up Canadian Housing Policy: From Research To Action.”

If you are curious to learn more, have some research you’d like us to amplify or want to engage with the research or the CHEC team, reach out.