The Housing Services Act (HSA) is coming into force on January 1, 2012. Repealing the earlier Social Housing Reform Act (SHRA), the HSA, its regulations and the Housing Policy Statement involve some key changes that affect the social housing business in Ontario.

At age 81, Al Gosling was evicted from a Toronto Community Housing building for failure to pay rent. He subsequently became homeless and died of an infection five months later. The high profile case spurred the Lesage Report, which highlighted a troubled relationship between the role of social housing landlord and tenants with mental health issues. But the report’s recommendations have left housing providers wondering about the extent and responsibilities of their role.

Preventive Maintenance is not as sexy as constructing a new building; it’s more like the ongoing care you devote to keep a marriage going. Making something last longer by taking care of it saves money, keeps things valuable and enables you to rest easy knowing that it won’t shut down or spontaneously break up with you…. pun intended. As with relationships, building components start out new and nice to look at, and then over the years they can get a little run down and start to not work as well as they used to. To avoid the relationship rut between you and your building equipment, here are some easy tips to keep things spicy and working the way they should.

Some of the products we use daily to clean interior spaces contain chemicals associated with eye, skin, or respiratory irritation, as well as a range of other human health issues. The fact that the cleaning products we use may have very real health and environmental concerns is an important incentive for ‘green’ cleaning. Here are 6 tips for starting a green cleaning program.

Building strong communities means going beyond “bricks and mortar” to ensure individual well-being, economic and social inclusion, financial and environmental sustainability, and building on the capital that already exists. Here is a compiled list of 10 tips found to be effective in building strong relationships within communities.

Many of us have come to see conflict as at best a necessary evil, and at worst something to be avoided at all costs. Yet many conflicts result in positive outcomes. Here are 5 conflict strategies which are all appropriate to use in diverse situations.

Every summer, London & Middlesex Housing Corporation (LMHC) run a residential Garden Project to brighten up the common and family spaces in their community. Social Housing Today interviewed Michelle Lynne Goodfellow, LMHC’s Development Coordinator and project lead of the Garden Project, to learn more about the project.

UPDATE: In a recent article in SEE Change Magazine, Cynthia Ross (SHSC) and Hadley Nelles (SIG@MaRS) go in-depth on the School of Social Entrepreneurs – Ontario (SSE-O). They talk about the emerging needs of social entrepreneurs, what is SSE-O, how it benefits our local communities, why Ontario needs SEE-O, and the goals and objectives of the program.

The first phase of a study on Ontario’s Special Priority Policy (SPP) Impact Study was recently released by a joint research task force. SPP allows victims of domestic abuse special priority for social housing, which became a legal requirement for all social housing providers with the Social Housing Reform Act, 2000.

There seem to be as many definitions of ‘risk’ as there are risk managers, but simply put, risk is anything that impacts your ability to achieve your objectives. By identifying risks and strategies for mitigating risks, some incidents can be prevented and the impact of others can be controlled. Learn how to develop your own risk management plan.