It is with great pleasure that Canadian Studies welcomes Allison Evans as the program's third and final new Hildebrand Fellow for Summer 2023.
Allison is a Ph.D. student in city and regional planning. Her work takes a critical approach to housing policy and land use planning. She examines the barriers to creating truly affordable housing, and how municipalities can deliver on their housing goals.
Allison's Hildebrand Fellowship will enable her to study Housing Now, an affordable housing program in her home city of Toronto. Housing Now aims at developing affordable housing through public-private partnerships and surplus city-owned land. Allison's research is motivated by the limited assessments of Housing Now's progress, and to better understand the current critiques of the program. Through in-depth interviews, she hopes to learn about the program's successes and what could be improved upon in the future.
Allison holds a B.E.S. and M.E.S. in planning from York University in Toronto, where she researched various housing-related topics and published peer-reviewed articles about the political economy of student housing and state ambiguities around tent encampments in the city.