Community Bonds and Place-based Investment: Financing Solutions for Affordable Housing

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Financing Solutions for Affordable Housing - From Neighbours to Investors

As housing affordability continues to challenge cities across Canada, communities are exploring new ways to finance affordable housing beyond public funding, cross-subsidization, and debt financing. One emerging approach is community bonds—a tool that enables individuals and institutions to invest locally while generating social impact.

This Impact for Breakfast Ottawa session will explore how community bonds work in practice, why they matter in today’s housing landscape, and how they can be used to mobilize local capital for community benefit.

Using Ottawa Community Land Trust (www.oclt.ca) as a case study, the discussion will examine how community bonds are being used in Ottawa to finance and preserve permanently affordable housing. Participants will gain insight into the structure of community bonds, the role of community investors, and the opportunities and trade-offs involved in community-led finance.

The session will focus on practical learning, real-world application, and open conversation - true to the Impact for Breakfast format.

Participants will learn:

- What community bonds are and how they differ from traditional financing options
- Why community bonds are emerging as a critical tool amid rising housing costs and constrained public funding
- How local capital can be mobilized to support affordable housing while strengthening community ownership 
- Lessons from the OCLT fund-raising campaign and implications for future community led ownership models

This session is designed for investors, social enterprise leaders, housing advocates, policymakers, students, and community members who want a practical understanding of how community finance works on the ground and how it can be scaled responsibly.

As always, Impact for Breakfast events are intentionally informal, conversational, and focused on learning through real examples.

Hosted by: Social Innovation Lab at Algonquin College (https://www.algonquincollege.com) and SPEnD (https://spendsocial.ca)