Places for People (P4P), in conjunction with Staanworth and KLH Housing Corp., the other community housing providers in Minden, has received a grant of almost $50,000 from the Community Housing Transformation Centre to help their tenants get together to figure out how to make their communities a place where everybody has the feeling of belonging.
P4P spokesperson, Fay Martin, said tenant-landlord relationship are complex, “but landlords and tenants alike are generally left on their own to figure out how to get it right.”
Yet, with “run-away” real estate prices, she said it is likely that a growing portion of the population will be tenants, “so ensuring they feel like first-class citizens will protect the health and well-being of the community as a whole.”
Martin added the community housing tenant-landlord relationship has added complexities.
She said the three community housing groups operating in Minden have come together to take advantage of the grant to help them do their work better.
The project is a nine-month tenant-centric participative research project that will focus on making their communities a good place to live.
Tenant representatives from each of the seven community housing buildings in the village, along with representatives from each of the housing providers, will give leadership to the project.
Martin said research staff who have lived experience as community housing tenants will facilitate several cycles of information gathering and sharing about life in each of the communities and of being a tenant generally, and a community housing tenant in particular.
“Participative research addresses an issue in the process of studying it; it looks not only at what the problem under investigation is, but also what the solution to that problem might be and how it might be achieved,” Martin said.
“The intent of this project is to develop and test-drive an on-going mechanism for identifying and resolving issues among tenants, housing providers, service providers and the larger community, as well as building on the strengths in their communities.”
