Faculty of Divinity, Trinity College, University of Toronto (current); London School of Economics and Political Science, Political economy of public policy (2008); University of Toronto, Law (1983–1986 attr); The University of Calgary, General studies - political science (1980–1982)
affordable housing, homelessness, social initiatives, health and housing
Website
www.sorrentocentre.ca
Michael Shapcott is Executive Director of the Sorrento Centre,[1] a retreat and conference centre in the Shuswap region of British Columbia, Canada, that offers in-person and on-line events and activities. Previously, he served as Director of National Business and Community Strategy for Prince's Charities Canada.
He is a Canadian academic, advocate and activist whose public policy work focuses on housing, homelessness, and the relationships between health, poverty and housing, as well as human rights. He has worked on housing and homelessness initiatives at all levels of government including international levels.[2] He has served as Director of the Affordable Housing and Social Innovation at the Wellesley Institute (WI), a non-profit and non-partisan research and policy think tank in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[3] He was manager of the Community/University Research Partnerships (CURP) program at University of Toronto's Centre for Urban and Community Studies,[4] where he promoted links between academic research and social justice. Shapcott is a founding member of the National Housing and Homelessness Network[5] and the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee.[6] He served on the board and as president of the Toronto Environmental Alliance.[7] He also served on the global Board of the Habitat International Coalition. Shapcott was a founder of the Multifaith Alliance to End Homelessness in Toronto (2007). Prior to that, he was manager of government relations and communications at the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada (Ontario Region).[8]
Shapcott is a founding member and served as a board member of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness,[9] which has emerged as a leading Canadian advocacy organization.
For the first decade of his working life, Shapcott was a print journalist, working as a reporter, columnist and editor at several Canadian newspapers - including the North Bay Nugget, the Oakville Journal Record and the Calgary Albertan.
Michael Shapcott went to Alexander Galt Regional High School (1970–1972) and took courses including political science at the University of Calgary (1980–1982) and then studied law at the University of Toronto (1983–1986). He did not go before the bar but instead began to work at the Christian Resource Centre[10] as a homeless outreach worker and community and housing developer. He attended summer programming at the London School of Economics in 2008. Shapcott is completing a Master of Theological Studies at the Faculty of Divinity, Trinity College, University of Toronto (2016–current).
In 1989, Shapcott, Bart Poesiat and future Toronto mayor Barbara Hall created the Rupert Pilot Project[11] to fund affordable housing initiatives which received substantial funding in the early 1990s from the Ontario government.
Shapcott came to public attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s for his work in BASIC Poverty Action Group which was the genesis for the Breads Not Circuses coalition which argued that the money being spent on Toronto's bid for the 1996 Summer Olympics could be better spent on housing.[12] His detractors vilified him for helping compromise the city's bid for the 1996 Olympic Games.[13]
Shapcott was ordained as a Deacon in the Anglican Church of Canada in the Diocese of Toronto in 2016. He is licensed to serve as a Deacon in the Diocese of Kootenay, in the Ecclesiastical Province of British Columbia and Yukon, Anglican Church of Canada.
Over the years, Shapcott has been appointed to and has served on governmental bodies at the federal, provincial and local level, including the Downtown Community Health Board, Toronto Board of Health (1990), the Corporate Minimum Tax Working Group of the Ontario Fair Tax Commission (1991) and numerous others, He continues to be active in governmental issues, most recently serving as an appointed member of the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District's Sorrento-Blind Bay Incorporation Advisory Committee (2019 - current).[16]
Shapcott was awarded the first Terence and Alice Jean Finlay Bursary for studies that celebrate and advance diversity in Anglican Church, Diocese of Toronto (2017); and awarded Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for outstanding community service (2012).
Selected publications
Shapcott, Michael (August 2010). Precarious Housing in Canada(PDF). Wellesley Institute (Report). Toronto, Ontario. Retrieved 12 February 2014. In this often cited report, Shapcott uses a graphic entitled "Precarious housing iceberg" to represent the layers on the spectrum of precarious housing in Canada in 2010. Above the water line the visible iceberg represents the visible homeless (150-300,000) but below the water other layers on the spectrum of housing vulnerabilities include the hidden homeless (450,000-900,000), overcrowded (705,165 h/hs), substandard housing (1.3 million h/hs), core housing need (1.5 million h/hs), inadequate housing (2 million h/hs), annual housing supply deficit (220,000 h/hs) and unaffordable housing (3.1 million h/hs).
Co-author, with Jack Layton. Homelessness, How to End the National Crisis, Revised and Edited.[17]
Co-editor, with David Hulchanski, Finding Room: Policy Options for a Canadian Rental Housing Strategy[18]
Barbara Hall is a Canadian lawyer and former politician who served as the 61st mayor of Toronto from 1994 to 1997, the last mayor of Toronto prior to amalgamation. Hall served as the chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission from 2005 to 2015.
Jean Augustine is a Grenada-born Canadian politician. She was the first Black Canadian woman to serve as a federal Minister of the Crown and Member of Parliament.
Peter Goldring is a former Canadian federal politician.
Arthur C. Eggleton is a retired Canadian politician who served as the 59th and longest-serving mayor of Toronto from 1980 to 1991. He was elected to Parliament in 1993, running as a Liberal in York Centre and served as a member of Parliament (MP) until 2004 when he declined to seek re-election. Eggleton held a number of cabinet positions from 1993 to 2002 including Treasury Board president, minister of infrastructure, minister of international trade, and minister of national defence. He was appointed to the Senate in 2005, serving until he reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 in 2018.
Homelessness in Canada was not a social problem until the 1980s. The Canadian government housing policies and programs in place throughout the 1970s were based on a concept of shelter as a basic need or requirement for survival and of the obligation of government and society to provide adequate housing for everyone. Public policies shifted away from rehousing in the 1980s in wealthy Western countries like Canada, which led to a de-housing of households that had previously been housed. By 1987, when the United Nations established the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless (IYSH), homelessness had become a serious social problem in Canada. The report of the major 1987 IYSH conference held in Ottawa said that housing was not a high priority for government, and this was a significant contributor to the homelessness problem. While there was a demand for adequate and affordable housing for low income Canadian families, government funding was not available. In the 1980s a "wider segment of the population" began to experience homelessness for the first time – evident through their use of emergency shelters and soup kitchens. Shelters began to experience overcrowding, and demand for services for the homeless was constantly increasing. A series of cuts were made to national housing programs by the federal government through the mid-1980s and in the 1990s. While Canada's economy was robust, the cuts continued and in some cases accelerated in the 1990s, including cuts to the 1973 national affordable housing program. The government solution for homelessness was to create more homeless shelters and to increase emergency services. In the larger metropolitan areas like Toronto the use of homeless shelters increased by 75% from 1988 to 1998. Urban centres such as Montreal, Laval, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary all experienced increasing homelessness.
Alexander Himelfarb is a Canadian former senior civil servant and academic.
Shuswap Lake is a lake located in the southern interior of British Columbia, Canada that drains via the Little Shuswap River into Little Shuswap Lake. Little Shuswap Lake is the source of the South Thompson River, a branch of the Thompson River, a tributary of the Fraser River. It is at the heart of a region known as the Columbia Shuswap or "the Shuswap", noted for its recreational lakeshore communities including the city of Salmon Arm. The name "Shuswap" is derived from the Shuswap or Secwepemc First Nations people, the most northern of the Interior Salish peoples, whose territory includes the Shuswap. The Shuswap call themselves /ʃǝxwépmǝx/ in their own language, which is called /ʃǝxwepmǝxtʃín/.
Bruce Bunji Kuwabara, is a Canadian architect and a founding partner of the firm KPMB Architects. He is an invested Officer of the Order of Canada and recipient of the RAIC Gold Medal. He is Board Chair of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.
The 519, formerly known as The 519 Church Street Community Centre, is an agency by the City of Toronto. A Canadian charitable, non-profit organization, it operates a community centre in the Church and Wellesley neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The 519 serves both its local neighbourhood and the broader lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) communities in the Toronto area. The 519 defines its local neighbourhood by a catchment area that spans from Bloor Street to the north to Gerrard Street to the south, and from Bay Street in the west to Parliament Street in the east.
Cathy Crowe, is a Canadian "street nurse", educator, author, social justice activist and filmmaker, specializing in advocacy for the homeless in Canada. She is a frequent commentator on issues related to health, homelessness and affordable housing. She is currently a visiting practitioner at Toronto Metropolitan University.
James Gurnett is a former politician from Alberta, Canada. He served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1985 until 1986. He is currently the principal of Common Place Services, doing a variety of consulting work, primarily with NGOs.
Stephen Gaetz, is the director of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (COH) and a professor at the Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Gaetz has enhanced pan-Canadian collaboration between stakeholders interested in homelessness research in Canada.
KPMB is a Canadian architecture firm founded by Bruce Kuwabara, Thomas Payne, Marianne McKenna, and Shirley Blumberg, in 1987. It is headquartered in Toronto, where the majority of their work is found. Aside from designing buildings, the firm also works in interior design. KPMB Architects was officially renamed from Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects to KPMB Architects on February 12, 2013.
Affordable housing in Canada refers to living spaces that are deemed financially accessible to households with a median household income. Housing affordability is generally measured based on a shelter-cost-to-income ratio (STIR) of 30% by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the national housing agency of Canada. It encompasses a continuum ranging from market-based options like affordable rental housing and affordable home ownership, to non-market alternatives such as government-subsidized housing. Canada ranks among the lowest of the most developed countries for housing affordability.
The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (COH)—formerly named the Canadian Homelessness Research Network (CHRN)—is a Canadian non-profit, non-partisan research institute that works with researchers, service providers, policy makers, students and people who have experienced homelessness.
Poverty in Ontario refers to people living in the province of Ontario, Canada who are deprived of or facing serious challenges in meeting basic needs such as shelter, food, clothing and other essential needs. Based on relative and absolute measures, there is a significant level of poverty in Ontario.
Yvan Baker is a Canadian politician who was elected to represent the federal riding of Etobicoke Centre in the 2019 federal election and in the 2021 Canadian federal election. He is a member of the Liberal Party of Canada. Prior to entering federal politics, he served as the Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for the provincial riding of Etobicoke Centre from 2014 to 2018.
Shirley Blumberg is a Canadian architect. She is a founding partner of KPMB Architects in Toronto, a Canadian practice. In 2013, Blumberg was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada "for her contributions to architecture and for her commitment to creating spaces that foster a sense of community." Notable projects include the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) Campus, 2011 which is the recipient of the Royal Institute of British Architects International Award (2012), the Architectural Record “Good Design is Good Business Award” (2013) and the Governor General's Medal for Excellence (2014).
Alloura Wells was a Canadian transgender mixed-race woman who died in Toronto in July 2017. Her body was discovered in a ravine the following month, but she was not reported missing until 6 November 2017, and her badly decomposed body was not identified until 23 November.
Bonnie Briggs (1952/1953-2017) was a Canadian affordable housing advocate and poet. She created the Toronto Homeless Memorial in 1997.
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