The Big Story Small Town Week, Episode 1: Can we build new housing ourselves?
Welcome to Small Town Week, a five-part series in which we examine big problems facing small communities.
Access to affordable housing is not just an issue in large cities across Canada anymore—small communities are also struggling to provide affordable places for the people who need them. And perhaps nowhere is that crunch felt harder than Canada’s north. Everything costs significantly more there, from groceries to basic supplies to houses.
To address the high cost of living, Nunavut relies heavily on an already overwhelmed public housing framework. But it wasn’t always that way. For many years, people in the area that would eventually become Nunavut were regularly building their own homes to live in.So why did that stop? And would bringing it back offer a glimpse of a way out of the crisis we’re facing?
GUEST: David Venn, journalist formerly based in Iqaluit, wrote this series for Nunatsiaq News
We love feedback at The Big Story, as well as suggestions for future episodes. You can find us:
Through email at hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca