Taproot harvests curiosity about housing at well-attended event

Roughly 18 months ago, Taproot started work on a project to examine the complexity of Edmonton’s housing ecosystem. The idea was to speak to multiple people within the system to identify some of the entanglements we can feel within it. Consider someone realizing their beneficial location on housing comes partly at the expense of others, or someone living with those negative consequences, or someone living without stable housing at all.

Writer and researcher Eric Rice, photographer Jordon Hon, and reporter Stephanie Swensrude discussed Taproot’s Housing Complex series with moderator Karen Unland in front of a crowd of about 70 people at CKUA on Nov. 27. (Mack Male/Flickr)

On Nov. 27, Taproot brought the resulting Housing Complex project to the public by hosting an event that was part panel discussion, part question-gathering, and part mind-mapping exercise. While we discussed our editorial series, we also turned the mic (or in this case, markers) over to participants. We asked the more than 70 people in the room what questions people hope city council candidates can address on housing during the coming 2025 election campaign, what people are curious about, and where they locate themselves within the broader housing ecosystem.

Here’s some of the input we collected during the event:

What do municipal candidates need to know about housing in Edmonton?

Attendees had plenty of questions and exhortations for the candidates who will be seeking office in the municipal election in October 2025.

“How can we incentivize builders to build more affordable housing?”
“How can we create a housing culture that’s unique to Edmonton, that is also ‘positive’ — and doesn’t leave people behind?”
“Work with (other) governments to reduce regulatory and attitude barriers!”
“Why has so much money been invested in shelters when we know they don’t house people?”
“How do we continue removing barriers for hard-to-house people and build more wraparound support directly into our communities?”
“Why subsidize suburban ‘infill’ with poor transit and terrible connectivity?”

An attendee at “Taproot presents: A conversation about housing” on Nov. 27, 2024, offers a thought at one of the activity stations. (Mack Male/Flickr)

What are you curious about on housing?

Taproot is built on the value of curiosity, and we bring this to every event we hold. Event attendees had plenty to offer.

One person asked for more stories on how people who have avoided homelessness have done so, and how someone who has transitioned into housing did so.

Others told us they are keen to know more about “innovative partnerships” to develop and operate affordable housing.

Still others identified the often fractured relationships between governments and asked how this might change. “How can the municipal, provincial, and federal governments work better together to provide affordable housing,” one wrote.

Another captured what many feel but struggle to say: “How have things seemingly changed so much in the past decade?”

Where are you in the housing ecosystem?

Taproot lastly asked people to locate themselves within the city’s housing ecosystem, how they felt about that position, and anything that made it complex. We put their written answers up on the wall as a bit of a mind map.

Mayor Amarjeet Sohi participates in one of the activities at Taproot’s housing event while managing editor Tim Querengesser looks on. (Mack Male/Flickr)

Many told us they own their homes, though a sizeable chunk told us they rent, and still others said they had complex arrangements that don’t easily fit in these categorizations.

How people felt about their position in the ecosystem ranged from “Love it!” and “Lucky!” to “Relief” and “Difficult to picture the future.”

One person wrote they feel “guilty” about how much space, or affluence, or comfort they have.

“I feel isolated,” another wrote.

“I feel under cost pressure and mortgage rate pressure,” yet another wrote.

Another wrote they are stuck with a condo they can’t sell and are forced to be a landlord.

“Hard to balance feeling guilty, grateful, and stressed,” another person summarized. “All of the above.”

When offered a chance to explain what made their housing situation complex, more interesting details emerged:

“Not enough affordable housing options available for students.”
“The house has multiple owners and figuring out who pays for what can be complex.”
“I want to buy a home close to the core but increasingly feel I’ll never be able to afford to get into home ownership.”
“My property value skyrocketed recently and while that’s great for me I know it will cause issues for others.”
“Things are expensive.”
“Landlord relationships are crucial.”
“My home is not accessible and I can’t have my grandparents over.”
“We have so much room but are not close to transit.”
“Why is CMHC subsidizing suburban housing?”

Conclusion

The input Taproot received at the event will help inform the questions we ask candidates in the lead-up to the 2025 election and could lead to future stories as well.

Election day is Oct. 20, 2025. During the last municipal election, in 2021, Taproot created the People’s Agenda, which used extensive surveys to find out what Edmonton residents cared about and how candidates aligned with those goals. Taproot also offered plenty of news you could use in 2021, from where to vote to where to watch results roll in.

Our election coverage may differ slightly in 2025, but Taproot will work to equip our city with facts, context, ways to engage, and news people can use.

For more from the Taproot team on what Edmonton’s city council can and can’t do about housing, and what that will mean for the coming campaign, listen to Episode 289 of Speaking Municipally.

Taproot members speak: ‘Keep it up but also go deep’

We convened some of Taproot’s most committed supporters for the first in a series of listening sessions to understand why they value Taproot, where we can grow, shift, or improve, and how we might organize more community conversations focused on Edmonton.

This invitation to gather online on Sept. 13 was extended to paying members, partly to thank them for supporting the journalism we practice and publish, and partly to tap into the insights of our most committed supporters. Some are so dedicated, in fact, that their Taproot consumption sometimes overlaps. “I actually interrupted my listening to this week’s Speaking Municipally to come to this event,” joked one participant, noting they’ve never missed an episode of our weekly civic affairs podcast.

An analog version of Taproot’s dearly departed story garden, an early experiment in gathering our community’s curiosity. (Mack Male/Flickr)

We promised anonymity to encourage candour. Here is a condensed and edited report on what participants told me:

‘Why are you a Taproot member?’

“It’s valuable to have some little nods to things happening in the city that I wouldn’t have access to otherwise since I don’t have social media and I’m very happy about that,” one member said in response to an opening question about why they belong to Taproot.

The social media-free point resonated with others, too. “I left Twitter when it got sold, and I’m done with Facebook as well,” said another member. “I like the focus on local stuff. I like the in-detail descriptions and, again, I like the lack of the trauma and the drama. It is a source of a lot of ideas, and I think that exchange is healthy.”

It’s about values, said a member who has supported Taproot since the beginning back in 2016. “I just really loved the idea of having a community-driven and curiosity-driven news source,” they said. That same member valued Taproot’s “story garden,” an early experiment in curiosity-harvesting that allowed members to seed ideas for stories to pursue.

“I’m really fed up with the ‘mainstream media’ and its lack of impartiality,” another member told me, dropping that business and hockey interests seem to dictate editorial decisions at some legacy news outlets. “I also am very interested in municipal activities.”

Another amplified this point. “It’s important to have those local voices and, you know, we’re just getting fewer and fewer of these media entities.”

Some members said they are active in other communities that foreground connection and positive engagement with the city, such as Coffee Outside. And several said they joined Taproot thanks to their respect and connections with co-founders Karen Unland and Mack Male.

‘What are you curious about?’

I learned that Taproot’s members are quick with praise but also candid with feedback, which I deeply value.

Several suggested that Taproot has paid too little attention to what’s happening at school boards in Edmonton as we head into the next municipal elections in 2025.

“There’s a lot of partisanship in the school board already, so I’d like to hear more about that,” one member said. “One of the things that I’m interested in is that there is a deliberate attempt by Take Back Alberta to infiltrate the school boards across the province.”

Other members agreed. “I’ve got serious concerns about what will come in (at school boards), especially with Take Back Alberta,” one said. “They follow exactly the same model that has been followed in the United States — so, your Moms for Liberty kind of people. That’ll be traipsing in here, and they have pots of money.”

A theme of the conversation was the balance between breadth and depth. Some members said Taproot does breadth well but can improve on depth.

“Is there a role for investigative journalism in the future of Taproot Edmonton?” one member asked. “Because I think there’s a timidity about much of the reporting now. It’s being very safe. It’s not wanting to irritate people.”

Another added: “I’m going to cast my vote on depth versus breadth and say maybe don’t take on new topics but just go a little bit deeper into the things that you’re already doing. And I know with the election, that just seems like a natural (thing). You know you did great coverage last time, and we need that this time.”

Yet another member said critical perspectives should be present in as much of Taproot’s reporting and coverage as possible. “For me, it’s not even the need to do deep-dive investigative (journalism), but just maybe present another perspective,” they said, pointing to the introductory pieces that top our seven weekly roundups in particular.

Members say they want community

A sentiment that resonated with most members who participated in the listening session was enthusiasm for Speaking Municipally’s live recording on housing challenges, organized with the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative in May. The event brought people together in real life to connect and ask deep questions about complex issues.

Members told me they want Taproot’s listening sessions to edge closer to that model.

“I’d like to encourage Taproot to do that same thing again … there’s so many issues that we could link into,” they said. “So that might be a good thing to explore in the immediate future. Let’s bring people together. There is virtue in having a face-to-face conversation about these things as opposed to doing it virtually.”

I deeply value the chance to talk to people who read what we work on daily. Many thanks to all who participated. I agree that meeting in person would be valuable, and I’m now considering how that might happen. Whether the next listening session is in person or online, I aim to run the next one in November. I hope to see you there.