The Social Development Centre has partnered with the City of Kitchener to initiate a Lived Expertise Working Group on housing. Over the next two years the working group will be advising the City of Kitchener’s Housing for All Strategy to implement and monitor some of the affordable housing actions and programs that better address the challenges of people experiencing marginalization. 

This working group is a pilot project to model how Lived Expertise engagement can evolve and look like in the future. Building on the City’s desire to ensure representation of those with lived experience, our model of Lived Expertise encompasses advocacy, community accountability, and transformative power. The working group will continue refining this model to make recommendations for other institutions engaging people with lived experience in decision making and hands-on collaboration.

Thanks to our many community partners, the twelve working group members have been selected, scheduled to meet for the first exploratory meeting on May 26th. 

Please join us in welcoming the working group members to this exciting project: 

• Charlene Lee

• Charles Nichols

• Donald Lacasse

• Fidelia Ukueje

• Heather Majaury

• Julian Ichim

• Latasha Wilson

• Maedith Radlein

• Mauleek Bhatt

• Melissa Byrne

• Milo (Tia) Hansen

• Udanapher Nadine Green

The project is funded and supported by the Community Housing Transformation Centre, City of Kitchener and School of Planning, University of Waterloo.