Practice guides
These practice guides are written specifically for residents, landlords, housing operators, non-profit organizations, and municipal governments. The guides summarize Hey Neighbour Collective’s key learnings about the vital roles that each of these groups can play in fostering neighbour-to-neighbour connectedness and social resilience in multi-unit housing. The guides also point to the top tips, tactics, and strategic approaches, and describe the most common benefits that emerge for everyone involved.
Guide 1 shows how residents can take leadership, while guide 2 and guide 3 look at what landlords, housing operators, and community non-profits can do on their own or in creative, adaptive collaborations. Guide 4 discusses specific opportunities for local governments to sow seeds and help foster the entire sector.
Find more of our reports, practice guides, and resources.
Looking for Concert Properties ‘Community Connectors’ guide?
Practice Guide 1: Supporting Residents to Become Community Connectors in Multi-unit Housing
“Resident champions” or “social animators” can do a lot to help foster more vibrant, connected communities in multi-unit housing. The results are often a greater sense of belonging for everyone and more robust practices of spontaneous mutual aid, among other benefits. This guide discusses fun activities that residents can initiate, both “light-touch” and more involved, from lobby puzzles and doggy play-dates to emergency preparedness workshops. Also explored are many relatively easy things that landlords, housing operators, community organizations, and governments can do to support residents in making these kinds of activities happen.
Read this practice guide online.
Practice Guide 2: Landlord- and housing operator-led approaches to growing community in multi-unit Housing
With relatively small investments of staff time or resources, landlords and housing operators can benefit from fostering greater social connections in multi-unit housing. Residents often show greater care for the property, for example, while conflicts may become less frequent. Featuring real-world testimonies from experts at Brightside Community Homes Foundation, Catalyst Community Developments Society, and Concert Properties, this guide discusses a range of strategies that landlords and housing operators can initiate, from simply providing a supportive environment to proactively taking leadership.
Read this practice guide online.
Practice Guide #3: Developing organizational partnerships to build community in multi-unit housing
Where there is a shortage of time or capacity for a single resident champion, housing operator, or community organization to take on full leadership, partnerships can be of enormous help in fostering social connections among residents in multi-unit housing. This guide puts the spotlight on creative, practical partnerships between municipal government departments, landlords, housing operators, and community-based organizations that are bringing residents together to help make buildings more inclusive, improve collective emergency preparedness, and enhance engagement with supportive service agencies. A simple table lays out what each category of partner can typically bring to the table, and what benefits each often gets in return.
Read this practice guide online.
Guide 4. Roles for Local Government in Strengthening Social Connectedness and Resilience Activities in Multi-unit Housing
Connected residents tend to be more resilient to crises and less reliant on first responders, for example, and a stronger sense of collective community can lead to improved civic engagement and reduced crime. But what are the best roles that local governments can play in fostering social connectedness among residents in multi-unit housing? In this guide, staff from local governments in Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster, along with their community and resident collaborators, discuss why they became involved in helping build social connections, what they’ve done, and what they’ve learned.
Read this practice guide online.