Samenvatting

Social housing is not an individual or family subsidy and it is not subsidized homeownership. It is physical housing that is funded via government, often in partnership between various orders of government or with not-for-profit housing providers. Notably, social housing is designed to remain as a permanent public good (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe [UNECE], 2021). Social housing predates welfare systems (Scanlon et al., 2014) and was foundationally designed and implemented for broader aims than current systems, where extreme housing disadvantage is often prioritized in over-subscribed systems. Preceding World War II (1939 1945), social housing became a broader community good designed to address insufficient supply and high costs of private housing (Rolnik, 2019), supporting a large variety of housing needs. However, in the Global North, the social housing landscape has very much changed.

On September 17, 2025, Canadian and Dutch researchers hosted a workshop on social housing to discuss and learn about the evolution of social housing and best practices in delivering quality social housing. The workshop convened housing experts, service providers and academics from diverse countries, which included learnings from Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Ireland. The key takeaway from the workshop was this: reimagining social housing in both the present and future must include the foundational aspect and ethical responsibility of building and restoring “community”. Learnings from the workshop detailed how the concept of community in social housing design and implementation has been lost by many and, instead, social housing has been under-funded, the role of government in providing social housing has been largely missing, and the implementation of social housing has, at times, lacked dignity.