Housing Affordability Tactics for Creative Humans
Facilitators : YTB, SHEEEPschool, Alexandra Hong, Tom Clement , Joshua Barndt
Day 1 Panel Discussion: Co-ops & Community Land Trusts
w/ Alexandra Hong (TCLT) & Tom Clement (CHFT)
Friday, March 7, 2025
6:30pm - 10:30pm EST (Talk begins at 7:00)
at BAAA! (300 Campbell Ave, Unit 114)
Free
Day 2
Workshop: Acquisitions Crash Course – Supporting Communities to Preserve Affordable Rental Housing
w/ Joshua Barndt (NLT)
Saturday, March 8, 2025
10am - 5pm EST at BAAA! (300 Campbell Ave, Unit 114)
Lunch will be served
Free
Register Here
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).
🏡 On Friday, we will pick 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 (Executive Director) will speak 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 (Founding Co-chair of TCLT) will speak 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.
🤝 On Saturday, the workshop is being facilitated by Joshua Barndt, Senior Manager of Development Strategy at Parkdale’s Neighbourhood Land Trust (NLT). 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 will offer 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
A one-day intensive practical workshop on preserving affordable rental housing through acquisitions. This session is designed for emerging planners & community organizers who are eager to tackle the housing crisis with real-world, community-driven solutions.
Lunch provided
Very limited capacity
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. 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.
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.
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.