Community Housing Transformation Centre Funding: CBTI and ARC

  13 December 2022

The Community Housing Transformation Centre offers support, information, and grants to the community housing sector, including non-profit housing co-ops and their residents.

Community-Based Tenant Initiative (CBTI)

CHF BC would like to highlight one Centre program in particular, the Community-Based Tenant Initiative (CBTI). It is focused on tenants (in rentals) and members (in housing co-ops), aiming to promote residents becoming active participants in the housing world. CHF BC thinks there are good opportunities for co-ops to strengthen already active memberships and that now is a great time to apply for CBTI.

This is a short video to summarize the program:

As noted, two key activity areas are resident (tenant/member) inclusion and resident engagement.

Do you have something in mind that would create opportunities for members to organize, develop or advocate for more and better community housing? To better participate in community housing governance? Consider also groups within the co-op community that may be particularly vulnerable. Funding opportunities for CBTI are time limited. Apply as soon as possible (by January’s end, ideally) for the best chance of success.

Active Resilient Communities (ARC)

CHF BC is concluding the pilot phase of its Active Resilient Communities (ARC) Program early in 2023 and will be launching more broadly for any interested co-ops. The ARC program aims to assist individual co-ops beyond their everyday operations and provide opportunities for members to express themselves and help guide their co-ops into the future they envision. ARC hopes to help co-ops come to a vision for the future, informed by focused discussions with facilitators (on key topics of concern — varying with the co-op) and then working to help members develop a list of actions to take. Ideally, big ideas are broken down as much as possible into manageable chunks so the co-ops can then work to make progress to see their visions realized over time.

We think accessing ARC can be made easier through CBTI. You might apply to the Centre specifically for the assistance that ARC allows to help co-op members better connect to represent their common interests and aspirations in a practical way.