Affordable Housing & Sustainable Development Goals

Welcome, and please join us in the co-creation of a province-wide virtual asset map, a made in Nova Scotia resource to foster collaboration and reflect our shared journey of building Nova Scotia’s affordable housing sector.

This map constitutes a space for learning and reflecting on the Build Together project’s themes and the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). includes an “Agenda 2030: Leave No one Behind,” that provides a framework for how we contextualize housing issues, both passionately and ethically, every day in our communities. Because The UN Declaration of Human Rights is the foundation of the United Nations’ SDGs, those rights for 1.7 billion people, who are housing insecure, are being denied. In Canada, 1.6 million peoples’ housing are insecure or at risk, while provincially, one-quarter of Nova Scotians do not have affordable housing (Engage NS, Quality of Life Survey, 2022).

In this transformational era when housing insecurity is, unfortunately, the new narrative “the SDGs provide a moral compass for our world, which includes governments, civil society and the private sector,” says Sr. Marion Sheridan (SDG Webinar Series: Part 1).

The strength of the virtual asset map’s function as a portal is to discover our collective, creative energy to address the UN SDGs’ mandate. Through this collaborative process, we identify our commonalities as our gifts and assets. By sharing ideas, this project is created by you and your neighbours. We encourage you in your communities to take part in this process and to share its value with your networks.

As an inspiring virtual space, the outcome will be to build our asset map together. As The Nova Scotia Non-Profit Housing Association becomes a reality, you will support the learning opportunities, collaborative frameworks and searchable themes and indices your input for the map makes possible.

Your network’s testimonials on the map’s community space will create a transparent, searchable oral history of the success stories that contributed to better community housing in Nova Scotia. Why together we’re doing this process is to build an organized, skilled, knowledgeable, connected and prepared entity of which your stories are the foundation to spark the beginning of a movement to develop a Nova Scotia Non-Profit Housing Association (NSNPHA) comprised of systemically marginalized communities, represented by grass-top groups, networks & coalitions (as well as formal, non-profit housing providers).

Our priorities will be:

• to make this map user-friendly and easily updated by the user for the user to have the tools to draw their community’s geographic boundaries and social parameters.

• to provide an easy way to record your first-person narratives and community stories recording

• to identify partnership opportunities by listening to other people’s stories and thinking of ways to partner with them (Partnerships for the Goals [#17])

• to acknowledge the commonalities of the UNSDG framework and “Agenda 2030” so we can share our local communities’ unique assets to connect and collaborate at a neighbourhood level using simple mapping tools

When sharing the SDGs Nikki Jamieson with Atlantic Council for International Cooperation says: think of them as a shared global vision that can help us initiate conversations and help us co-create solutions for tangible collaboration and actionable goals.

Let us connect Partnerships for the Goals (SDG 17) by completing a short Assessment Inventory to discover who is working with, and willing to, connect around provincial efforts of: No Poverty (SDG 1); Good Health and Well-being (SDG 3); Affordable and Clean Energy (SDG 7); Reduced Inequalities (SDG 10) Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11)