{"id":441495,"date":"2025-03-17T04:00:48","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T08:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada.constructconnect.com\/?p=441495"},"modified":"2025-03-14T14:17:50","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T18:17:50","slug":"breaking-many-barriers-smart-density-co-founder-tackles-housing-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada.constructconnect.com\/dcn\/news\/labour\/2025\/03\/breaking-many-barriers-smart-density-co-founder-tackles-housing-diversity","title":{"rendered":"Breaking many barriers: Smart Density co-founder tackles housing diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"
Naama Blonder has put issues such as improved housing costs and increased housing diversity as top priorities at Smart Density, the Toronto-based architecture and urban planning firm she co-founded almost eight years ago.<\/p>\n
Blonder, an architect and urban designer\/planner, says Smart Density along with two partners has been recently awarded a CMHC grant titled Breaking Zoning Barriers: A New Solutions Lab to Unlock Housing on Faith-Based Lands.<\/p>\n
The aim is to look into zoning reforms that would allow faith-based properties to develop housing on underutilized property.<\/p>\n
Faith-based organizations own significant land and often have social mandates that include the development of affordable housing, but they face a complex approvals process to remove zoning barriers prescribed only for institutional development, she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis land is such a low-hanging fruit (for affordable housing), but if you think about churches they don\u2019t have a clue about what development is.\u201d<\/p>\n
In collaboration with the Kehilla Residential Programme, an affordable housing organization, and BGM Consulting, Smart Density is focusing on practical solutions to help these churches and other faith-based organizations overcome these barriers.<\/p>\n
Under the Solutions Lab, Blonder says she will be spending a lot of time with municipalities and policy-makers nationwide discussing zoning reforms that strike a balance between institutional and housing needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they (municipalities) are serious about it, I have the resources and funding to figure out how to rewrite their zoning,\u201d Blonder points out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is such an easy win for so many municipalities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf your municipality is revising its zoning regulations or is interested in enabling housing development on faith-based lands, we want to you to get in touch,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
While zoning reforms could open a gate to affordable housing, it is just a start to addressing the housing crisis in ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø.<\/p>\n
She says the shelter shortage is deeper than many stakeholders in the development industry are willing to acknowledge.<\/p>\n
Not nearly enough affordable housing is in the planning stage or underway, she adds.<\/p>\n
While high interest rates are often blamed as the cause of the crisis, \u201cthey are just nails in the coffin.\u201d<\/p>\n
high costs of construction and the rising development charges are also attributed to why affordable units haven\u2019t kept up to demand, but even before these increases, affordability took a back seat to other developments, she points out.<\/p>\n
Stakeholders, Blonder says, have to stop pointing fingers at each other. \u201cSomething has got to give. Is it going to be tax, construction costs? I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smart Density is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Best Emerging Practice Award in 2022 by the Ontario Association of Architects.<\/p>\n
Blonder, who has been the industry for 14 years, says while it hasn\u2019t always been easy being a woman in the male-dominated world of building and design development, she hasn\u2019t faced the struggles that women in the field faced a couple of decades ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is still a lot of work to be done but I am 100 per cent certain that 25 years ago it was much harder than it is for women today. They really suffered but paved the way for us.\u201d<\/p>\n