We first met Peter MacLeod when he moderated Yonge Street's panel on transportation earlier this year.
 
A co-founder of MASS LBP, an advisory firm which helps governments and corporations engage and consult with citizens, MacLeod did a great job of shaping grumbling into brainstorming. So we had to ask him back to moderate our June 21 panel: Is Affordable Housing a Right? (The details and register link are at the bottom of this page.) His job: Help both the panel experts and attendees generate real solutions to the city's affordable housing crunch.
 
Paul Gallant: What made you interested moderating in Yonge Street's panel on affordable housing?
 
Affordable housing used to be something we were really good at in Canada that we've stepped away from. I think there's a lot of concern about growing income equality in Canada and one of the places you see that growing disparity is in Toronto, where it's certainly becoming less and less affordable for young people, young families, for anyone who's not in some high-paid occupation, to have the middle-class quality of life that was part of the promise of Toronto and that made it such a successful city in the 1970s and '80s.
 
Does affordable housing get a bad rap?
 
It's a question of what comes to mind when you think of affordable housing. If what comes to mind is a slightly decaying apartment block, something that overshadows the other houses in the neighbourhood, a desert for small businesses—no grocery stores, no local commerce—something that's not well-integrated into that community or street life, then you're going to have an aversion to it. But that caricature is totally at odds with what modern affordable housing really is all about, and that's about successful community integration. It's something we know how to do. In Toronto, the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood is something that's cited as a preeminent example.
 
What happened?
 
It's a story of downloading. The federal government wanted out of the business and wanted the province to step into it. The province stepped out of the business and hoped the city would step into it.
 
What's the role of the private sector and what should it be?
 
In this housing boom, we're building all these condos, but we still lack the regulatory means to insist that new buildings have a certain number of affordable units in them. It's something other provinces, notably British Columbia, have enacted. If that legislation was passed, the private sector would be much more involved because they'd have to create business models and a housing plan that would make accessible units available.
 
Has the condo boom made us more sensitive about the cost of living in this city? Could all these new units coming on the market help make housing more widely available?
 
Anyone who looks at the prices of very modest homes or who looks at the pages in the real estate section of the newspaper are likely to get sticker shock and feel like this city isn't built for them. One of the problems with these condos is that they're not really built for families. There's more capacity for the rental market, but we're not building sustainable neighbourhoods that are attractive to people at various stages of their lives.
 
How important is design in providing great affordable housing?
 
Canada has some great architecture firms but we don't have enough of them because we're not commissioning enough socially responsible infrastructure and buildings. You have to go back to the 1960s and '70s, with Habitat at Expo and the very young Moshe Safdie. There was a Canadian aesthetic of civic urbanism that you can see carried forward into the St. Lawrence Development and Granville Island in Vancouver. You had these architecturally ambitious projects that raised the bar for everyone else. Now we often end up focusing on costs over other considerations.
 
Have we been as creative as we could be in looking at models of affordable housing?
 
Well, I'm afraid I'm just the moderator here. But if you look at countries like in Northern Europe where there are all manner of models from cooperatives and mutual societies to clever financing mechanisms to lower the cost of ownership. The banks could play a different role. I'm hoping our guests next week will give us some ideas of how we can raise our game.

The Yonge Street Speaker Series is sponsored by the Toronto Community Foundation.
 
It's free and everyone is welcome. Please click here to register.
 
Is Affordable Housing a Right?

The details
Thursday, June 21
Doors at 6:10pm; program starts at 6:40pm
ING Café, 221 Yonge Street (please use Shuter Street doors to enter)
 
For those who would like to return for the talkback session, part two takes place Thursday, July 19, same time, same place.
 
We'll be using the hashtag #yongetalks for this series.
 
Paul Gallant is Yonge Street's managing editor.
 
This interview has been edited and condensed.