Adequate housing includes access to employment opportunities, health-care services, good transit, schools, and other childcare facilities. Residents should live in communities that are diverse, sustainable, and supported to build secure, productive and meaningful lives.
- New Brunswick Housing Study. We investigated the mental and physical health implications of social housing for low-income residents in New Brunswick. This work is supported by CIHR, and in partnership with the province’s Department of Social Development and the NB Housing Corporation.
- New Brunswick Housing Summit. The NB Housing Summit is an ongoing community engagement event that engages local members of the housing, health and social services provision sectors to share and discuss information on the housing market, the need for community housing, and the work of service providers to promote inclusion and wellbeing.
- Housing for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD). In partnership with Inclusion New Brunswick, and with additional funding from a SSHRC Insight Development Grant, we are examining the housing landscape for people living with IDD, including those who live in congregate housing, and investigating how policies could be tailored to better support their inclusion. This work attends to the erasure of disability, and in particular people with IDD, in traditional housing policies. It also builds on disability-specific findings from the Without Protection report.
Research Team
Dr. Woodhall-Melnik is the Principal Investigator of the Housing, Mobilization & Engagement Research Lab (HOME-RL) and a strong advocate for poverty reduction, affordable housing, and social inclusion for individuals who experience mental illness, systemic discrimination, and challenges related to relative income inequality.
Dr. Haley is the co-director of the Housing, Mobilization and Engagement Research Lab. She conducts community-engaged, research blending critical policy ethnography, archival research, and arts-informed approaches to make visible the impacts of Canadian social policy for people living at the intersection of disability, socio-economic poverty, and housing precarity.
Dr. Hall specializes in disability, learning disability, social inclusion/exclusion, and belonging.
Dr. Reiser’s social and urban geography research investigates the impacts of public policies and housing market transformations on vulnerable migrants’ residential trajectories.
Dr. MacDonald researches the experiences of frontline housing workers in community housing organizations across Canada.
Dr. Zhu’s research focuses on housing and community issues of immigrants, low-income populations, and ethnic minorities.
Dr. Wilton’s research is broadly concerned with the social geographies of exclusion. Much of his research has focused specifically on the experiences of people with disabilities.
Students
Sabine O’Donnell | McMaster University
Sabine completed her Master’s thesis in 2022. Congratulations, Sabine!
Aoife Campbell-Franks | University of Dundee
This research is a comparative project between the UK and Canada. Aoife’s research aims to use the disruptions and new ways of thinking caused by the pandemic as an opportunity to rethink and improve the provision of social housing for people with disabilities.
Lead Community Partners
The Ministry of Social Development is responsible for community housing management and development in New Brunswick.
Inclusion New Brunswick advocates for and empowers New Brunswickers with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
