CMHC Design Challenge

by Blake Melnick, CEO and Chief Knowledge Officer for the Knowledge Management Institute of Canada

and Allison Davies, Head of Program Development for the Knowledge Management Institute of Canada

KM and Workplace Innovation Design Challenge: How to Ensure Every Canadian has Access to Affordable Housing by 2030

Introduction

In order to ensure students were able to engage effectively with the challenge within the relatively short time frame of the course (6 weeks) It was important to have our workplace partner, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) frame their challenge in such a fashion that participants were able to clearly understand what they were being asked to investigate, and were able to develop viable solutions which were of value to CMHC. However, the challenge statement shouldn’t be too narrow in focus, so as to discourage “out of the box” creative thinking.

We intentionally chose to begin the course with a focus on the design challenge, so as to provide an authentic context for the theory components of the Program - allowing students to view and apply what they were learning through the lens of the challenge they were being tasked to help solve.

Working closely with CMHC we developed the guiding document outlined below for participants. We also asked CMHC to host the first webinar of the course - a 1- hour presentation about their challenge with time for participants to ask clarifying questions.

Ongoing Support

So that students would have access to CMHC expertise when they needed it, and CMHC was able to monitor student progress, we provided the CMHC designate with a “window to the workshop” so to speak. They were given 24/7 access to the learning environment and we will set up a daily email notification. In this way they were aware of student contributions related to their challenge, allowing the designated support person to wade in at any time to answer questions, provide feedback, upload supporting material or to simply read student contributions. Notifications were delivered to this person once daily.

The CMHC Design Challenge Guideline

Objective:  Every person in Canada should have access to a home that meets their individual or familial needs for less than 30% of their income.

Problem Details: Unfortunately, the current average percentage of people in Canada in core housing need, (paying more than 30% of their income for housing), is 13%. Additionally, core housing need has never been below 11% and is much higher in certain geographic locations. As such, CMHC has recognized that they need to operate differently in order to make a substantial impact and reduce core housing need to 0%.

One important point to note is that the changes that we make have the potential for huge impacts on Canada as a whole so determining possible unintended consequences of any solutions is crucial.

Current solutions: CMHC has a number of existing solutions that we use to manage affordability which can be seen in the file CMHC Housing Solutions. As we have traditionally focused on controlling demand through products and services in the homeowner space, we are not looking for more solutions in that area or improvements to existing solutions for the purposes of this project.

Explanation of additional resources

• What we've heard

  • Background on initiatives that we included in the National Housing Strategy after having spoken with Canadians

  • https://www.placetocallhome.ca/consulting-with-canadians.cfm

• National Housing Strategy

  • The National Housing Strategy is a 10-year, $40 billion plan that addresses a wide range of challenges and covers the entire housing continuum, from shelters and transitional housing to affordable rentals and home ownership. 

  • https://www.placetocallhome.ca/index.cfm

  • Our Corporate Strategic Plan 

  • Our internal priorities and how we are changing the components of our organization to be more focused on affordability

 Optional Guiding Topics

• Socioeconomic aspects of housing

  • Which components have the greatest effect on core housing need and have the most impact per dollar?

  • What partnerships would be required to affect change in that space?

  • Which housing solutions/type of supply are required and in what distribution in order to solve this problem?

• Densification and demand in megacities

  • What is the ideal density to promote affordability while still maintaining the benefits of city living?

  • What contributes to demand being so high in some cities and how can those components be positively manipulated to allow for reduced demand? (proximity to work, vibrant community, etc.)

  • What are some of the unintended consequences of reducing the demand and future density of cities, the impacts of those changes, and ways to mitigate the negative effects?

• Housing supply solutions are underrepresented in CMHC's work

  • Exploration around which location, areas, distribution of solutions, housing type, etc. make the most impact on affordability

  • Potential for the modern-day equivalent of war time housing

  • Potential impacts of the new solutions

• As housing prices increase, supply remains fairly constant which greatly affects affordability and results in 1) people getting less housing per dollar, and 2) CMHC investments being less effective (inelasticity of supply)

  • What are some of the causes for this? (zoning rules, ground space constraints, building material limitations, building timeline vs need, etc.)

  • Beyond even the ideas for addressing inelasticity of supply, there are a number of effects that this could have. We need to consider the current homeowners whose homes would potentially decrease in value, the sources of demand, and the different needs of various purchasers of homes.

Framework for Student Innovation Challenge Reports

Once the Challenge Guideline was created, we co-developed a complementary yet simplified framework for students to use in their final report

Section 1: The Why - Executive Summary linked to Organization Strategy

The executive summary provides the reader with high level strategic, big picture overview of what the organization is trying to accomplish:

• Strategic Goals / Objectives for the stakeholder

• Report rationale

• Why it is important to the stakeholders at large (Canadians)

• How the client will be able to use the report to address their mandate and mission

Section 2: The What: Introduction

• Scope of the report

• Limitations of the report

• The research methodology/design thinking behind the report

Section 3: The How: Detailed Approach

• Goals and objectives

  • Goal definition document describing each goal

  • Metric an measurement for each goal

  • Proposed remediation should something happen that was unintended (how you will adapt)

• Employee/stakeholder communication plan

• Employee engagement strategy – How you will achieve engagement and ownership for the initiative

• Roadmap – how your strategy will be rolled out

• Description of Phases

  • Timelines

  • Metrics

  • Activities

  • Anticipated benefits with a description about how each benefit will be assessed

Section 4: The When: Implementation strategy

• Listed in terms of priority

• Timelines for each phase

• Milestones for each phase

Section 5: Summary of Recommendations

Each recommendation should include the following:

• A brief description

• Estimated resources required and cost (if known)

• Priority (high, medium, low)

• Responsibility within the organization i.e. HR, Operations, Senior Management etc.

• Critical success factor(s)

• Initial assessment of the expected benefits

Section 6: Appendices – Supporting documentation for the report and your team’s recommendations