It started about ten years ago. As emerging artists, YTB members were trying to imagine how we were going to live our lives, raise a family, take care of aging parents, and maybe retire. The ways artists made a living in previous generations weren’t going to work out for us. Someone said, “we should all just live together in a trailer park.” Through conversations, workshops, and programming with our peers, YTB embarks on a journey to research and co-dream a vision of an artists' cooperative with shared land and facilities (gallery, alternative school, studio/programming/residency spaces, daycare, etc) with space to build tiny homes, co-run an arts-based community centre, and learn and support each other.
YTB Gallery and SHEEEP𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵 invite you to dream with us.
We have been holding a series of public visioning sessions with early-career artists & collectives. We are creating a community to answer the following question: How can artists co-create the conditions to meet our basic needs, without replicating the logics of settler colonialism and an art sector that is sustained by its own dark matter?
🌳 What are the art ecosystems we want to build?
🏘️ Chat about artist co-ops, cultural land trusts, solidarity economy, and other key ideas for alternative housing solutions
📚 Co-create a learning plan with us to realize this dream you didn’t know you had
🤓 Meet other enthusiasts and future collaborators!
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Collaborators:
Younger than Beyonce (YTB) Gallery is a collectively-run, nomadic organization supporting millennial artists and emerging artists of any generation. We began in 2014 as a DIY response to the exhibition Younger Than Jesus, the New Museum’s first triennial of emerging artists, which problematically defined our generation as consumers rather than producers. We provided emerging artists with paid opportunities to experiment and exhibit their work at our gallery in Regent Park, and nomadically through collaborations with the Feminist Art Gallery, Margin of Eras Gallery, The Public Studio, Art Gallery of Ontario, Luminato Festival, Gardiner Museum, Katzman Contemporary, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Images Festival, and MOCA Toronto. Most recently, our work explores collaborative pedagogy in the arts, inviting emerging practitioners through evolving projects with Gudskul Ecosystem (Jakarta), Flux Factory (New York) and Collective Collective (Toronto).
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Ric Amis is a lens-based artist specializing in photography, film, and video, and a long-time resident of Parkdale, Toronto. His artistic practice has been showcased internationally, with exhibitions in Canada, the USA, Poland, England, and France, and his moving image works have been featured in galleries, theatres, and on broadcast TV.
A dedicated advocate for housing affordability and community well-being, Ric co-founded two Toronto artists' housing co-operatives, Beaver Hall and Lakeshore Village, creating sustainable live/work spaces for artists. He has served on the boards of the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust and the Neighbourhood Land Trust, working to preserve affordable housing and community spaces.
Currently, Ric is the Chair of the Parkdale Residents Association and the Spokesperson for the West Side Community Council, representing community associations across Toronto’s west end. Through his arts practice and activism, Ric continues to champion equitable housing solutions and vibrant, inclusive neighbourhoods. A recent example is the “Artists in Flux: Community, Space, Gentrification” forum held this past November in Parkdale.
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Dr. Lilian Radovac is a disability-identified scholar, documentarist, organizer and artist who currently serves as vice-president of the Lakeshore Village Artists’ Co-op (LVAC), where she has lived since 2021. A second-generation Torontonian, Radovac was born in Parkdale, raised in the Junction, and lived in Montreal and Brooklyn before returning to her hometown in in 2017, where she encountered a city that had been completely transformed by gentrification as she documented its recent past with the Alternative Toronto digital archive project. She is a staunch supporter of not-for-profit housing, for artists and all city residents, and of Toronto’s independent arts spaces and venues. Radovac is presently revising LVAC’s 30-year-old bylaws, along with her fellow members of the co-op’s bylaws committee.
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Peter Norman is a writer: he has published four poetry collections, a novel, and a children's book. He also works as a freelance editor for several Canadian publishers. For nine years, he has lived at Lakeshore Village Artists' Co-op, where he has served on the membership committee, the bylaw committee, and the board of directors, including stints as president, treasurer, and corporate secretary.
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Pat Lewis, now retired, performed for over 40 years as a singer and puppeteer. Besides creating and performing puppet shows with her own company Meadowsweet Productions, she has also worked with Frog Print Theatre, Lampoon Puppet Theatre and the Muppets. She has also facilitated many Arts In Education Programs and Learning Though the Arts Programs. She and her family moved into LVAC in 1993 when it first opened. She is currently the President of the Board and a member of several committees including the Newsletter, Events/MPS and Gardening committees. In the past she has also served on the Membership committee. She is delighted to share her co-op experiences with younger artists and hopes that the future will bring affordable housing to all who need it.
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Tom Clement has been working in co-ops since 1978, quickly becoming a co-op manager and then moving to the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto in 1981 as Member Services Co-ordinator. He became the federation’s Executive Director in 1994. Tom has been involved in many innovative projects. Overseen by him, the federation manages two land trusts that protect the tenure of the co-operatives involved. The Co-operative Housing Land Trusts (CHLT) represent 10,000 members that live in 32 co-ops throughout southern Ontario. At the national level, Tom served on CHF Canada’s Education Committee, the Risk Underwriting Fund and the Federal Co-operative Stabilization Fund. He currently chairs the Executive Directors’ Roundtable, a regular meeting of senior sector leaders, and serves on the CHF Canada board of directors as the Ontario regional director. In a career spanning over 40 years in co-operative housing, Tom has never ceased to believe in the power of co-ops to create a better world.
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Joshua Barndt is a Community Land Trust and affordable housing specialist with expertise in acquisition and retrofit projects, community-engaged planning and research, strategic planning, business planning, asset management, fundraising, partnership development and organizational leadership. He is the Senior Manager of Development Strategy at Parkdale’s Neighbourhood Land Trust (NLT). Joshua’s collaborative approach has supported numerous initiatives and partnerships in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood, and the co-founding of the Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts to support emerging and community land trusts across the country. Joshua has successfully secured over $35m in grants, financing and impact investment for affordable housing projects. Joshua has been staff at Parkdale’s Neighbourhood Land Trust since 2015, directing its operations and leading the organization through early development, charitable registration, and successful acquisition of land for affordable housing, supportive housing and community economic development. Under Joshua’s leadership, the Neighbourhood Land Trust holds 86 properties with 206 affordable rental housing units on behalf of the community in downtown Toronto.
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Alexandra Hong (she/her) is the founding Co-Chair of the Toronto Chinatown Land Trust (TCLT), a community-controlled effort to acquire, develop and steward land in perpetuity, for community needs and benefit. She was part of the working group of grassroots organizers that has been leading and stewarding the TCLT since prior to its inception. She is responding to the legacy of her poh poh (grandmother), who was an avid volunteer within Toronto’s West Chinatown since arriving in Canada following the Vietnam War. She believes that building community power is imperative to ensuring a more just and equitable future. Alexandra is also an interdisciplinary artist, producer and educator who develops complex, collaborative projects that aim to educate, inspire and transform. She is interested in collective worldbuilding, questioning ways of accessing knowledge, and creating spaces for dialogue amid hardened ideologies.
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Dan Jonas Roche is a New York-based news editor at The Architect’s Newspaper and a lecturer at The New School. He’s co-authoring a forthcoming book with Andrew Santa Lucia, “Antifascist Architecture” (Park Books: 2025).
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Lesli Gaynor is the CDO , Founder, and Lead Realtor of Husmate. Lesli is a real estate entrepreneur with 7 years of experience in selling co-ownership properties and 14 years as a changemaker in social work for public health. She is Chief Development Officer, Founder, and Lead Realtor at Husmates; a co-ownership real estate tech platform.
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Parimal Gosai is the CEO & Founder of Husmates. As a queer South Asian entrepreneur with a background in interior design, social housing, real estate and law, He is passionate about making homeownership accessible to everyone. He co-founded Husmates as a proptech platform to reimagine homeownership through co-ownership.
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Lesley Tenaglia is a seasoned Mortgage Broker at Fuse Mortgage Inc. in Toronto, with over 15 years of experience in the mortgage industry. She is known for providing thoughtful, strategic mortgage advice and personalized service to a wide range of clients, including first-time homebuyers, co-buyers, self-employed individuals, and those navigating complex financial situations.
With a professional background in hospitality and accounting, Lesley brings a unique blend of financial acumen and customer care to every interaction. She leverages access to over 50 lenders and hundreds of mortgage products to tailor solutions for mortgage renewals, refinancing, debt consolidation, and home equity loans. Her approach is grounded in transparency and education, empowering clients to make confident, informed decisions throughout their mortgage journey.
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Michael Piper is an Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Urban Design program at the University of Toronto. His research and teaching focus on the relationship between design, equity, and political-economic contexts with particular attention on the social and formal transformation of North American suburbs. He is a co-founder and director of tuf lab, a research group that brings together urban design and urban planning faculty at the U of T to explore wicked (tough) problems of contemporary urbanization. The group’s research contributes analysis of built form to social, political, and economic knowledge about cities. Piper is also a founding partner of dub studios, a design studio with offices in Toronto and Los Angeles where he manages urban design projects. Current projects and coursework focus on imagining more just and equitable housing scenarios for North American single-family suburbs and cultural spaces of citizens underrepresented in mainstream design and planning.
Friday, October 18, 2024
6:30pm - 10:30pm ET (Presentation start at 7:30)
YTB shared their journey as a collective and the beginning of their research on solidarity economy in the arts. We will facilitate conversations on equitable, affordable, and sustainable housing solutions for artists, cultural workers, spatial practitioners, critical thinkers.
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Workshop: Worldbuilding game
Saturday, October 19, 2024
4pm - 6pm ET
Nam and Lily of SHEEEP𝓼𝓬𝓱𝓸𝓸𝓵 facilitated a collective worldbuilding session, through a playthrough of a rendition of the tabletop storytelling game In This World by Ben Robbins. No experience necessary, just sit down and play.
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Panel Discussion: What’s it like living in an artist co-op?
Friday, January 31, 2025
6:30pm - 10:30pm EST (Presentation start at 7:00)
Ric Amis (co-founder of Beaver Hall Co-op and Lakeshore Village Artist Co-op (LVAC)) and Lilian Radovac (resident of LVAC) explored the hopes, opportunities, and realities of building and living in artist co-ops over the past 40 years. They shared insights on what the future of living collectively looks like—for those already doing it and for those planning to—through a panel discussion followed by a Q&A.
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Workshop: Re-envisioning the future through co-living
Saturday, February 1, 2025
3pm - 6pm EST
SHEEEPschool led us through a participatory workshop to help think through and re-imagine what living collectively looks like – we will call out the rules, systems, and norms that we want to see change, and reimagine a future that centres collective living and resource sharing. With special guests Peter Norman and Pat Lewis from LVAC.
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Panel Discussion: Co-ops & Community Land Trusts
Friday, March 7, 2025
6:30pm - 10:30pm EST (Talk begins at 7:00)
We picked up from the last module to explore how co-ops can go hand-in-hand with community land trusts to preserve, maintain and secure affordable housing.
Tom Clement spoke about the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto (CHFT), which since 1978 has developed over 60 housing co-operatives and established the Co-operative Housing Land Trusts (CHLT) land trusts to preserve, maintain and secure affordable housing in 32 co-ops throughout southern Ontario.
Alexandra Hong spoke about the establishment of the Toronto Chinatown Land Trust (TCLT) in 2023, which emerged out of many years of organizing and consideration by the grassroots group Friends of Chinatown Toronto (FOCT). TCLT is a community-controlled effort to acquire, develop and steward land for working-class people, towards economic and racial justice.
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Workshop: Acquisitions Crash Course – Supporting Communities to Preserve Affordable Rental Housing
Saturday, March 8, 2025
10am - 5pm EST
Joshua Barndt facilitated a one-day intensive practical workshop on preserving affordable rental housing through acquisitions. This session was designed for emerging planners & community organizers who are eager to tackle the housing crisis with real-world, community-driven solutions. In recent years Barndt has led the successful acquisition of 86 properties, totaling 206 permanently affordable rental units. Drawing on the experience of the NLT, this session offered a step-by-step crash course on the acquisition process, including:
✅ Why acquisitions? The role of acquisitions in housing preservation
✅ Key steps in acquisition planning – community housing needs assessments, site selection, feasibility assessment, and making an offer
✅ Funding and financing – navigating government funding programs and leveraging financing tools
✅ The acquisition pro forma – building a financial model to assess project feasibility & ensure long-term affordability
✅ Closing the deal – securing financing, insurance, and legal documentation
✅ Tenant engagement & building takeover – tenant meetings & communications, planning for property management and operations post-acquisition
✅ Capital repair planning – assessing renovation needs and securing funding for building improvements
✅ Future career opportunities – how planners can contribute to this emerging field
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Lecture & Discussion: The Social Life of Cooperative Housing in New York and Vienna
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
6:30 - 9:30pm EST
Dan Jonas Roche, New-York Based editor and writer presented his research about the life and career of Herman Jessor, a New York architect who designed more than 40,000 units of cooperative housing between 1921 and 1980. This research is the culmination of a long term project with photographer Zara Pfeifer, who has spent the past years documenting Jessor’s output.
Dan presented a brief biographical overview of Jessor, and talked about the context in which Jessor operated, namely how he was able to remarkably oversee the construction of so many affordable homes under the United Housing Foundation’s tutelage. Roche, Pfeifer, Brad Isnard and Katie Ladd are working together on a book about Jessor, slated for completion in the next few years.
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Workshop: Co-ownership Models
Sunday, June 1, 2025
10:00am - 5:00pm EST
A one-day intensive practical workshop on co-ownership models for housing. (Not-just-your-typical-) Realtor Lesli Gaynor led the workshop with support from her business partner Parimal Gosai, and mortgage broker Lesley Tenaglia - all of whom specialize in the respective parts of the co-ownership process. The workshop covered the process step-by-step: finding potential partners, creating a legal agreement and planning for the future, choosing a property, and applying for a mortgage. The workshop began with a thorough review of the requirements of a mortgage, then a discussion of how to anticipate and resolve conflict and crisis within a co-housing relationship, including divorce, death and disability. Then we reviewed a workbook and a legal agreement template Lesli has created from years of experience as a co-housing real estate agent. We worked through a pro forma for different types of properties to gain an understanding of different financial models. Michael Piper then presented about ReHousing, a research project about transforming single-family homes into multi-family housing. This research builds on related work in the exhibition Housing Multitudes: Reimagining the Landscapes of Suburbia. Coursework related to this topic include: Building Typologies of the Missing Middle, a graduate course offered in collaboration with the School of Cities, and ReBuilding the Yellowbelt (ARC200), an undergraduate drawing and representation studio for which 200 students redraw and reimagine single-family-type neighbourhoods across Toronto. In aggregate, these projects seek to counter patterns of segregation and exclusion that have been typical of the production of North American suburban regions.
We believe that pressure placed on the lower and middle working class by Toronto’s housing affordability crisis creates a core fundamental barrier for organizing towards collective liberation. The root cause of the housing crisis is the financialization of housing: housing being treated as a commodity and a vehicle for wealth and investment, rather than as a social good and basic human right.
While co-ownership (where two or more people buy a property together) still largely works within our hegemonic systems of real estate and ownership of land, it offers a small alternative step towards greater liberatory ends. By allowing lower and middle working class individuals to pool resources and achieve housing security together, while also offering practice grounds for collective values and overcoming alienation, it can bring us one step closer to fighting another day toward revolutionary reforms.
We learned about:
👩👩👧👧 Co-ownership - what it looks like and what you need to know
💸 Financing co-owned properties
🤝 Major Legal Issues and agreements
🏠 What is possible to build on lots in the city now and how it is great for co-ownership
💬 Negotiating, decision making and conflict management
👋 Exit strategies
🔎 Finding co-ownership partners through Husmates the matching App