Development of the Social Housing of Ontario (SHO) Registry by health region: a platform for health research with the social housing population

Abstract

Introduction: Social housing plays a critical role in addressing housing inequality and promoting well-being. This paper examines the creation of a registry of social housing sites across all six Ontario Health (OH) regions.

Methods: For all 47 housing service providers in Ontario, social housing address, provider type, and building type were extracted from their website or from documents provided by the housing organization. The Registry included rent-geared-to-income housing with unique or minimally shared postal codes. Descriptive statistics were analyzed for the housing site characteristics aggregated by OH region.

Results: 2,109 social housing sites were included in the final Registry, including 472 designated as seniors only (low-income naturally occurring retirement communities, LI-NORCs). There were regional differences in the proportions of each tenant designation, postal code uniqueness, housing provider types, and building classifications. For instance, the Toronto and North West regions had higher government-owned social housing sites (61% and 57%), whereas the East region had more non-profit owned sites (55%). Apartments were the most common building type across regions (57%), with varying proportions of townhouses and single/semi-detached houses.

Discussion: A social housing registry, the SHO, has been established, serving as a valuable resource for health research, especially for marginalized populations. It can be linked to other datasets for future studies. The SHO Registry provides a robust method for the determination of LI-NORCs (low-income naturally occurring retirement communities).