Ideas Forum: Confronting the Housing Crisis

DesignTO is a registered charitable arts organization that believes design can create a sustainable, just, and joyful world. From January 23 – February 1, 2026, the DesignTO Festival features 100+ free events across Toronto, showcasing hundreds of artists and designers. Known as Canada’s largest annual design festival, DesignTO has welcomed over 1 million attendees, reached 2.6 billion people through media, supported 7+ creatives, and generated $120 million in tourism impact.“DesignTO isn’t just a festival; it’s an anti-loneliness machine,” co-founder Christina Zeidler remarked, underscoring the organization’s power to foster belonging and spark vital conversations about design’s role in shaping a better world.

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Organized by DesignTO in partnership with the Toronto Society of Architects, this event features 5 fast-paced presentations.

Organized by DesignTO in partnership with the Toronto Society of Architects, ‘Ideas Forum: Confronting the Housing Crisis’ features five fast-paced presentations (20 slides shown for 20 seconds each) exploring housing equity, modular housing initiatives, rent-then-own models, and community support and consultation.A certificate for 1 hour of OAA ConEd will be issued to registered attendees who request it with their RSVP for the event and sign in to the event.SPEAKERS

Kellie Chin is an architect at WORKSHOP with an interest in promoting social responsibility and invigorating local communities. She has completed various buildings in Toronto, as well as projects with Toronto’s Shelter, Support &amp; Housing Administration, working on the new Rapid Housing Initiative, and 1,000 Shelter Beds Project. With an interest in housing equity, she contributed to work published in the book House Divided and in Azure Magazine. Most recently, she co-authored ‘The Case for Compassionate Design in Housing Standards’, an independent project to research the connection between health and housing published by Spacing.

Diana Chan McNally (she/they) Dipl. Community Work, BFA, MA, MEd. Diana is a former frontline worker in homelessness services who is currently employed by the Toronto Drop-in Network, where she oversees advocacy initiatives and learning opportunities for 56 organizations across the City of Toronto supporting unhoused people. As someone with lived experience of social services and being unhoused, Diana’s work focuses on human rights and equity issues for people who are experiencing homelessness, and she is particularly involved in rights protections for residents of encampments.

Reverend Faith Fowler is a graduate of Albion College, Boston University School of Theology and the University of Michigan. She has been the Executive Director at Cass Community Social Services for 25 years. The non-profit provides food, housing, health and mental health care, as well as jobs in Detroit. The Tiny Homes project was started in 2016 and, to date, has built 25 250-450 square-foot homes. It is a seven year rent-then-own model for low-income people.

Daniel Ling is a Director and Principal of Montgomery Sisam Architects in Toronto. With an outstanding combination of design talent and project management skills, Daniel has built a rich and varied body of work that includes residential, education, infrastructure, healthcare, office, and civic projects. His work focuses on creating vibrant, dynamic spaces that respond constructively to their surrounding context, and encourage positive, sustainable growth. He has contributed to many complex housing initiatives, including the City of Toronto’s Modular Supportive Housing projects and the Region of Durham’s Modular Supportive Housing project. He has also directed a number of assignments for Housing Now, a City of Toronto initiative that invests in city-owned lands to build affordable housing and mixed-use developments near transit, creating accessible, livable communities.

Eric Philip has been actively working within the supportive housing community for over 10 years, with the last four being in support of Dixon Hall in its dedication to those at risk within Toronto’s downtown east community. He is currently overseeing the multi-phased restoration of 22 historic rooming houses in the Cabbagetown neighbourhood, as well as the construction of a new community hub in the Corktown neighbourhood. His work is focused on developing models and systems that support individuals while engaging in effective community consultation. The capital repairs associated with the Rooming House Project are in tandem with the effective provision of social support by Dixon Hall to over 200 at-risk individuals.

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Ideas Forum: Confronting the Housing Crisis

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