Professor Dawn Parker receives funding to investigate lack of family-sized apartment housing in region

On Wednesday, June 22^nd, Dr. Dawn Parker, Professor in the School of Planning, was featured in Kitchener City News: “UW researchers received funding to investigate lack of family-sized apartment housing in region.”

Several researchers at the University of Waterloo have received funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada to investigate the lack of family-sized apartment housing in the Waterloo Region. They will be looking into the barriers that developers f

ace in our area when it comes to these housing units, identifying feasible and efficient potential solutions. Professor Parker noted the evidence around the scarcity of these types of homes in the region, which is what motivated the grant.

"The motivation of the research has become accelerated as single-family homes have become out of sight for even the above or below median income buyer. However, in terms of supply, we have seen more units being supplied in the suburbs. But there has been a dramatic and surprising complete shortage [of them] in the core area,” she states. In addition, Parker has shared with the region an opportunity to look at areas between 500 to 800 metres of transit stations, to "designate that specifically for low-rise intensified housing, and to take advantage of programs that come with particular zoning that would support affordable housing.” She says this will bring a lot of potential to “improve our climate profile.”

The complete article can be found here.