We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Housing Complex, a multi-part project exploring what works, what doesn’t, and what can be done to improve Edmonton’s housing system.

Starting on Oct. 23, you can read our effort to better understand the complexity of a system that touches all of us and raises issues that candidates will have to grapple with heading into the 2025 municipal election. More stories will be published over the coming weeks, continuing the conversation through National Housing Day and beyond.

For more on what to expect from the series, managing editor Tim Querengesser sets it up well in his introductory piece. I want to take you behind the curtain to explain how this project came about in the first place and why we approached it the way we did.

Our team has working on this series for months, but the seed that grew into Housing Complex was planted even further back in May of 2023. A valued member of our community reached out in advance of the annual homeless memorial service that the Edmonton Coalition on Housing and Homelessness hosts every year in June to honour those who have died from not having access to adequate housing. Could Taproot do something, he asked, to better tell the story of those who had passed? Could we find a way to go beyond the typical coverage of the event, which tends to share a number — a sadly growing number in recent years — but not much about the actual people?

I didn’t know. But it felt like an idea worth exploring. An obituary is a way of saying, “This person mattered.” Perhaps that was a service we could provide and a way to raise awareness of the tragedy happening on our streets. But at a meeting to discuss the idea further, Jim Gurnett of ECOHH gently suggested it could be very difficult to tell a full and dignified story about someone whose life had ended on the street. It would perhaps be more meaningful and useful to focus on those who were still alive.

That idea resonated, but it brought with it other challenges. How could we sensitively gather and tell those stories without engaging in the kind of extractive journalism that exploits people without making their lives better and sometimes makes things worse? I thought of someone who might be able to help: Eric Rice, a writer whose project This is Where We Live was the subject of a Taproot story in November 2022.

Eric interviewed eight people who were homeless or had experienced homelessness. He turned those interviews into monologues that were then performed by professional actors whose age, gender, and ethnicity matched that of the interviewees. He took pains to get his interviewees’ approval of the way their stories would be told. “Each interview transcript was reviewed and highlighted by third parties, their input was used to create scripts, and the scripts were read back to the interviewees before taping,” he wrote of the project, which was originally intended to be a piece of theatre but became a film due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I sat down with Eric to see if he had any advice on how we might be able to approach a similar project as respectfully as he did. But as we talked, we realized that focusing on the individual stories of people who had fallen on hard times ignored or even erased that the homelessness crisis is the result of a system we are all involved in. I might even have used the word “complicit,” as I was about to put my house up for sale and hoped to get significantly more than what we paid for it when we bought it in 1999. The market helps some and hurts others. To truly tell the story, we needed to widen the scope.

While all of this was happening, Taproot co-founder Mack Male and I were heads-down in the build-the-airplane-while-you-fly-it mode of a media startup. Even if it was a good idea to try to apply Eric’s approach to a broader cross-section of Edmontonians involved in the housing system, Taproot didn’t have the resources to pull it off alone, and it was vital to us that the people engaging in acts of journalism get paid. The good news was that Eric wanted to not only offer advice but get involved, and he was willing to look for the money to help make it possible.

Working with Jim at ECOHH, Eric put together a proposal for funding from the Alberta Real Estate Foundation, a grant-making organization that supports projects that help people better understand issues related to the real estate industry. With ECOHH as the fiscal agent, Taproot as the publisher, and Eric as the project lead, we made a successful case for a $10,000 grant. Then the real work began.

Guided in part by a survey sent to the partners’ communities, Eric came up with a list of the kinds of people he would seek to interview. As was the case with This is Where We Live, he sought his subjects’ approval of the edited interview before publication. This departs from standard journalistic practice and is not something we typically do at Taproot. But we decided it was justifiable, with the disclosure you are reading now, in order to set vulnerable subjects’ minds at ease. We offered the same to interview subjects who we would not describe as vulnerable, as the ethos of the project has been to put everyone on the same level.

The grant also allowed Eric to pay a small honorarium to some of his interview subjects to recognize the value of their time. This was at his discretion. Those whose participation could be seen as part of their job were not compensated; those whose connection to the system was mostly through lived experience typically were. Again, this is not standard practice in journalism, and Taproot does not pay sources. But we were willing in this case to let Eric put part of the grant towards this in a way that mirrored his practice with the previous project.

Eric conducted his first interview on Feb. 28 and his last one on Sept. 25. While that was happening, Taproot’s team grew, and we saw an opportunity to zoom out a bit on the larger issues connected to the experiences of our 12 interviewees. In May of 2024, our civic affairs podcast Speaking Municipally recorded a live show in conjunction with the summer institute of the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative. That acted as a bit of a preview for Housing Complex and gave our audience a chance to hear more from both Eric and Josh Evans, associate professor of human geography at the University of Alberta and director of the Affordable Housing Solutions Lab. Some of the questions posed by attendees inspired the explanatory pieces that our editorial team will share with you in the coming weeks — watch for a new story every Wednesday through October and November.

The final piece of the puzzle was how to present all of these words in an attractive and respectful way. Once again, someone Taproot has written about before was able to help: photographer Jordon Hon, whose docuseries about Chinatown was the subject of a December 2022 story. Jordon accompanied Eric to capture portraits of his interview subjects and the ways they live, adding another layer to the storytelling. We’re grateful that the grant allowed us to pair Eric’s careful and perceptive work with Jordon’s beautiful and telling images.

Based on what Tim heard at his listening session earlier this year, Taproot members want us to deliver more original journalism that goes deep, and they want to engage with each other in real life. We hope you’ll consider Housing Complex an example of the former. As for the latter, we’re planning to convene our collaborators, our participants, and the wider Taproot community at an event in November; that will also be an opportunity to learn more about the Affordable Housing Maintenance Fund, an endowment fund that Eric created through the Edmonton Community Foundation to create a stable, ongoing source of funding for the maintenance and repair of low-income housing in Edmonton. Stay tuned for your invitation to join us!

We’re grateful for the Alberta Real Estate Foundation’s support, which allowed us to pay for Eric’s time, Jordon’s photos, and some ancillary expenses. The grant did not cover the explanatory work, the development of the microsite displaying the project, or the coordination of many moving parts — Taproot relies on members, sponsors, and other paying customers to fund all of that.

You can help us continue to do the kind of work that informs and connects our community by becoming a Taproot member. If you’re already a member, please invite a friend to join you. We make all of our work free to read, but it is by no means free to make, and your support makes a big difference.

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.

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.