HNC Feature: “No Place like Home: The Missing Key to Our Housing Crisis”
A new book by Jessica Barrett, excerpted in The Walrus.
Jessica Barrett, author of No Place Like Home: The Missing Key to Our Housing Crisis, writes, “most people actually yearn for closer connections with their neighbours. They’re just not sure how to make it happen.” And this is exactly what we’re seeking to address.
We were excited to contribute to Jessica’s book, where Hey Neighbour Collective is featured in a chapter now excerpted in a recent Walrus article.
Fostering meaningful, neighbourly connections
In the excerpt, Michelle Hoar, Project Director at Hey Neighbour Collective, and Madeleine Hebert, Director at Happy Cities, share their perspectives on fostering meaningful neighbourly connections. They emphasize that spaces should be both designed and programmed intentionally, and that enabling neighbourly connections and interactions shouldn’t just be an afterthought. Importantly, they underscore that enabling connection doesn’t require significant investment: small, intentional, light-touch strategies can go a long way.
One concept they highlight is “bridging” relationships. These are the kinds of connections that build understanding across differences, creating “bridges” between people who might not otherwise interact. A simple example is a community garden that brings together residents from diverse cultural backgrounds.
As Michelle Hoar puts it, “That is something that we need a lot more of in this world, to find those kind[s] of slow, safe, low-stakes ways to get to know people who are fundamentally different than us. It’s kind of an important muscle.”
Read the full excerpt on The Walrus, Bad Housing Is Turning Us into Bad Neighbours.
And check out Jessica’s full book, No Place Like Home: The Missing Key to Our Housing Crisis.
For more on these ideas, take a look at some of HNC and partners’ work:
- Building Social Connections: Toolbox of design actions to nurture wellbeing in multi-unit housing
- Seven lessons for implementing social activities in rental housing
- How sociable is life in multi-unit rental housing: Results from Hey Neighbour Collective’s 2020-21 resident surveys
- Practice Guide: Learning from the community connectors
