New book on the history of Canadian social housing policy

One of Canada’s foremost authorities on Canadian social housing, Dr. Greg Suttor, has just authored a book on the history of Canadian social housing policy. Titled Still renovating: A history of Canadian social housing policy, it’s published by McGill-Queen’s University Press and covers the period from the end of World War II to 2013.

I’ve recently reviewed the book. Points I make in the review include the following:

-The book does an excellent job of quantifying trends in housing policy and includes excellent visual representations of data.

-The book is very readable.  Chapter 8 itself includes a great summary of the entire book that would be a great reading to assign to students.

-I feel the book had some shortcomings. For example, it didn’t fully explain why government should be involved in housing policy (even though the author is very knowledgeable on the many reasons why government should be involved). The book also provides less attention to neoliberalism than I would have liked.

The link to my full book review is here.