In early 2026, with support from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), SI Canada and Three Hive Consulting completed a comprehensive impact evaluation of the NHS Solutions Labs program, examining 71 Labs that had concluded by August 2025.
This case study shares insights from this program evaluation — and what they reveal about the potential of community-driven innovation to lead on national priorities.
Table of Contents
The housing sector faces challenges on a number of fronts, including affordability, social inclusion, northern and remote geographies, Indigenous-focused supports and environmental sustainability. Housing is a big, complex system that has traditionally been addressed through a top-down approach initiated by governments and other large entities. However, what may have worked before is no longer meeting all of the sector’s needs.
Within the context of a housing crisis in 2018, CMHC rolled-out a program that is a notable departure from standard government-led interventions: the National Housing Strategy Solutions Labs program. The intention was to flip the established process 180° by creating a bottom-up collaboration model. CMHC’s vision was to bring diverse, community-based voices and perspectives together, foster a culture of innovation in the sector, and contribute to the objectives and priorities of Canada’s first-ever National Housing Strategy.
On a small budget, this program enabled communities to build and strengthen critical relationships, ideate and experiment, and reinforce the conditions needed for longer-term systems change. The Labs program created safe spaces for bold brainstorming and experimentation. It catalyzed initiatives that have ongoing impact and continue to scale.
This case study explores how the CMHC National Housing Strategy Solutions Labs program created opportunities for community organizations and government to collaborate for social innovation in the housing sector.
By understanding how the program did things differently, we can learn how social innovation approaches can be applied to new situations, why community-based participation and collaboration is key for finding new paths forward, and how government and community can work together effectively to develop new solutions and increase innovation capacity to solve complex social sector problems.
The situation: housing needs spark innovation
Responding to national housing needs
The federal government launched Canada’s first National Housing Strategy (NHS) in late 2017, with a goal of ensuring everyone in Canada has access to housing that meets their needs and that they can afford. During the consultations that led to the NHS, stakeholders identified a need for capacity building and innovation in the housing sector, particularly for responding to the needs of vulnerable populations.
Doing things differently
The CMHC team thought about how they could do important things differently in support of the goals of the NHS. They had seen many housing solutions strategies over the years, but considering the serious issues being faced, they wanted to start with a fresh approach this time.
Since there was significant expertise within communities, they wanted to find a way to enable collaboration between grassroots subject matter experts and government. If the usual approach was for government to initiate problem-solving processes, they asked themselves how they could instead create an inclusive, collaborative, ground-up approach to understanding and addressing key issues related to affordable housing.
After careful consideration, they determined a solutions lab model would be the best approach to foster and support innovative, systems-focused responses to complex housing challenges. The labs were intended to generate solutions aligned with NHS priority areas and responsive to the needs of priority populations such as people experiencing homelessness, seniors, survivors of gender based violence, people with disabilities, racialized communities, refugees, veterans, and members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
By funding solutions labs, they wanted to create the conditions for change and place-based problem solving. In this way, forward-thinking solutions could be co-developed by engaged community members with diverse perspectives and expertise, including those with first-hand, personal lived experience of the problems that are faced when dealing with housing challenges. Additionally, each group was paired with a lab consultant with social innovation expertise.
“The program aimed to achieve three objectives: to rapidly incubate solutions to complex housing problems, build capacity in the housing sector and foster a culture of innovation,” says Andrew Cowan, Senior Specialist with the CMHC NHS Solutions Labs program.
The big goal? To develop and increase the sector’s capacity for building transformational change for years to come using a bottom-up collaboration model.
New solutions coming out of the labs could inform decision making at different levels of established systems, as well as create space for communities and governments to work together in new ways to solve complex housing problems.
The NHS Solutions Labs program launched in 2018 and is set to sunset in March 2027, coinciding with the end of the current National Housing Strategy.
Solutions Labs: creating the conditions for community-led innovation
The Solutions Lab program was developed to support grassroots housing innovation by creating space for solutions to come from community-based subject matter experts and be presented for consideration by governments, rather than the other way around. By providing funding and social innovation expertise support, groups could come together to imagine, question and innovate for the benefit of the housing sector in Canada.
With an annual funding budget of $3 million, the program opens competitive calls for proposals once per year. Teams of affordable housing subject matter experts (including housing providers, academics, stakeholders, and those with lived experience) submit proposals for solving specific housing challenges and their plan for developing prototype solutions. The application review process is powered by a volunteer reviewer network made up of hundreds of housing experts.
"The Solutions Lab provided crucial legitimacy, capacity and technical expertise to navigate complex regulatory requirements around co-op housing finance and securities."
CMHC also supports Directed Solutions Labs that are focused on solving housing challenges not being addressed through labs funded in the open call application process.
“The Solutions Lab provided crucial legitimacy, capacity and technical expertise to navigate complex regulatory requirements around co-op housing finance and securities,” says Sean Campbell, co-founder of Union Co-operative. He says they grew from a small community housing initiative in 2017 to an affordable housing developer through support from the Solutions Lab program.
NHS Solutions Lab collaboration structure
The NHS Solutions Labs program was created to fuel bottom-up collaborative innovation by community members with complementary expertise in the housing sector so they could focus on research, human-centered design solutions and ideation:
- Applicant: the organization who has identified the affordable housing problem that needs to be addressed and is seeking effective solutions.
- Partners: individuals (including those with lived experience), organizations, other levels of government, and communities that will fund, sponsor, or support the project with cash and or in-kind resources. Partners have an interest and ability/resources in supporting the implementation and scaling of the solution(s).
- Stakeholders: individuals, organizations, other levels of government, or communities who have a vested interest in, or will be impacted by, the proposed solution. They include academia, government officials, subject matter experts, NGOs, private sector representatives, and the end user – those with lived experience.
- Solutions Lab consultant (a required part of the project team): someone with expertise and experience in designing and delivering the methods and tools used in Social Innovation Labs.
By working together, these groups have been able to examine and reframe current housing issues, use innovative problem-solving best practices and tools, co-develop potential solutions to be prototyped and tested, and create a roadmap that clearly describes how the solution(s) can be implemented and scaled.
Designing a collaborative innovation process
The program developed a structured, collaborative process for the labs to use, enabling them to approach complex problem solving through systems and design thinking. This process consists of five phases:
“It’s important to have programs that support each stage of the innovation cycle,” says Ebony Bertorelli, Senior Manager, Sector Operations (formerly Innovation & Partnerships). “Participants in Solutions Labs were especially given the space to be able to focus deeply on the first part of the innovation cycle, which is problem identification. That is, in turn, critical to surfacing ideas that are truly disruptive, innovative or transformative.”
Since the program launched, 100 Solutions Labs have been supported across the country. Each lab has tackled important housing issues affecting their own community through collaboration and a real openness to explore forward-thinking solutions that may have never been tried before.
Challenges and adaptation in practice
Developing a new program to foster innovation required CMHC’s program team to think in new, innovative ways as well. For every challenge that emerged along the way, they committed to acting with the same spirit of experimentation, learning and adaptation the program itself was designed to encourage.
Navigating capacity issues
One of the program’s early operational challenges was managing the application review process. Erik Blache, Senior Manager, Innovation Programs, explains: “In the early days, we leveraged CMHC’s Expert Committee on Housing, which has a strong pool of qualified reviewers (College of Reviewers). These volunteers bring deep expertise and responded quickly—and very positively—to our request. In our most recent round, more than 75 reviewers volunteered their time. While the review process was initially perceived as onerous, it has been refined over time to enhance both efficiency and effectiveness. To date, hundreds of volunteer reviewers have contributed in support of the sector.”
Bringing the right people to the table
Another challenge that was addressed in the early days of the solutions labs being established was ensuring the right people were at the discussion table from the very beginning, such as subject matter experts and people in decision-making roles who could affect change within the sector. The team calls this process integrated knowledge mobilization. “If you’re aiming to drive change downstream, it’s essential to involve the decision-makers you’re seeking to influence as part of the process,” says Erik Blache. “When people develop a deep understanding of the issues and play an active role in shaping the solutions, it leads to stronger engagement and broader buy-in.”
Supporting early-stage innovation and enabling scale
Determining where government investment should be made to solve complex problems is an ongoing conversation and, at times, a challenge. There is value in all stages of the innovation cycle and one phase leads to the next in an informed way. It is recognized that in the early stages of this process, problems are researched and analyzed, ideas for solutions are generated, and prototype testing takes place. This takes time and a commitment to the process. There is always a desire to move quickly to the later stages, where promising solutions are implemented and easily countable, identifiable goals are reached. A key goal of the Solutions Labs program was to rapidly incubate and scale solutions. The how for achieving this key goal was not clear initially but with each round, the process evolved and improved thanks to the feedback received from both labs and consultants.
Measuring impact
Being able to demonstrate impact and show results is something the team thought about early on. The program was initially required to produce 100 case studies as part of their funding report to the government. “We quickly realized that there were a lot of positive impacts happening as a result of the Solutions Labs program and it made sense to capture that,” says Andrew Cowan. “We proactively developed an impact measurement approach within a year of launching their first program round, as well as a logic model and theory of change to demonstrate value and impact.”
Emerging impact and ripple effects
CMHC National Housing Strategy Solutions Labs program has funded 100 Solutions Labs in ten provinces and territories since it was launched in 2018. The program’s goal of increasing capacity for creating transformational change has already taken shape in a number of ways, including the following examples.
Changing how government sees housing solutions
“The Solutions Labs project has raised awareness in government about housing solutions built from the bottom-up, and that’s encouraging to see,” says Andrew Cowan. “It shined a light on how difficult conversations about affordable housing and the housing support system can be navigated in new ways.”
From engagement to co-creation
Adrienne Pacini, Solutions Lab Innovation Consultant and Partner at SHS, says the program helped to build sector-wide understanding of human-centered design. “I have seen changes in the discourse overall about what is engagement versus co-creation with people and I think that’s been very valuable. It’s given them new tools and inspiration for solving the housing issues affecting their community.”
Developing trusted networks of innovative problem solvers
“After being involved in 11 Solutions Labs, I have seen time and again that a fundamental element of success is to chart your path based on will and trust, rather than power and responsibility because that’s what creates a deeply resilient network,” says Bryn Ferris, Solutions Lab Innovation Consultant, leader of Lab projects and owner, Inspirit Labs. “In the housing sector we are often working with people with lived experience, trying to solve deeply complex issues; so it is paramount that people want to be there, trust the other people involved in the process, and have the ability to create spaces where the psychological safety of everyone is protected.”
Enabling community-led models for affordable housing
“We’ve seen a wave of community land trusts being established across the country and that’s a positive sign for the future of the housing sector. The Solutions Lab program has provided valuable funding, support and expertise that could inform future policy improvements that will unlock even more opportunities,” says Sean Campbell, Solutions Lab Innovation Consultant, leader of Lab projects and co-founder of Union Co-operative.
Inspiring the use of the Innovation Lab model within government
“The National Housing Council (that advises the Minister on the National Housing Strategy’s progress) was working towards creating recommendations for how Canada could achieve its commitment to the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing,” says Andrew Cowan. “They decided to set up a lab to develop possible solutions due to the complex nature of the right to housing commitments in Canada. The Lab approach provided a new way of understanding needs across the country and engaging those most affected to provide solutions for the Government of Canada to consider.”
Addressing friction between intersecting systems
“Friction points often develop where established systems interconnect,” says Bryn Ferris. “An example would be the justice and housing systems, where that kind of fragmentation can result in unnecessary burdens for the people using the systems. A family homelessness lab in Ottawa set up a rapid response table which brought together different players in the system to help coordinate options and preventative measures for families at risk of homelessness. Before that table was established, the families had to become homeless before some part of the system could start to work with them.”
Key learnings from 100 Solutions Labs
After working with 100 Solutions Labs, the team at the CMHC National Housing Strategy Solutions Labs program have many learnings to draw from, informing their work with policymakers and government agencies who are contributing to national and international goals.
Pair thematic and innovation sector experts for increased success
The decision to have dedicated social innovation consultants supporting each housing solutions lab was integral to their success. In this way, expertise from both the housing and innovation sectors could be woven together and ideas for solutions generated in new ways.
Ensure decision makers are included from the beginning
Integrating decision makers into the process from an early stage helped set the stage to ensure labs had both community and government input and buy-in, bolstering the collaborative efforts being made.
Find a balance between program structure and flexibility
The Solutions Lab program itself was able to continuously improve, refine and adapt their process as they received feedback from the people receiving funding. This flexibility within a structured environment, where they were always working towards achieving the program objectives, meant they could use an innovative mindset to update program processes and that created space for ongoing improvement.
Advance transformative change with a bias toward action
Each lab dug deeply into complex, complicated housing sector issues that are problematic in their community. Working their way through the Solutions Labs program’s innovation process, the people involved were committed to taking action at every step. Their goal was not just identifying which issues were problematic but to collaborate and come up with new, innovative solutions. Having a bias towards action keeps the energy of community labs moving forward, advancing towards transformative change.
Continued support is needed to scale solutions
Transitioning the work of Solutions Labs into the next phase of the innovation cycle so they can implement the solutions that proved to be successful requires additional funding and support mechanisms. This is an area that would benefit from long-term adoption and scaling initiatives.
Plan early for how to demonstrate meaningful impact
While the program successfully contributed to the creation of housing units and economic impact, it faced challenges in demonstrating immediate results to government decision-makers who prefer tangible, shovel-ready housing outcomes. This highlighted the need for meaningful impact measurement tactics to be part of the planning from day one of social impact initiatives.
Solutions Labs have led to the construction or initiation of more than 1062 affordable housing units, with approximately half of these projects currently in the development pipeline.
For every $1 dollar of funding in the Solutions Labs program, $4 dollars were levered.
Data provided by National Housing Strategy Solutions Labs team
“It is important to note that the creation of housing units was not a required outcome of the Solutions Labs Program. Nevertheless, several Labs ultimately contributed to the development of a significant number of affordable units.”
- NHS Solutions Labs Impact Evaluation Report, Three Hive Consulting (2026)
Conclusion
Over the past eight years, the CMHC National Housing Strategy Solutions Labs program has funded 100 Solutions Labs, supporting the grassroots efforts of subject matter experts to solve some of the most challenging issues facing the housing sector in Canada. True to the program’s objectives, this work has incubated a variety of solutions to complex housing problems, while building capacity in the housing sector, and fostering a culture of innovation.
Solving persistent problems that are part of large, complex systems is hard. It’s complicated. However, the Solutions Lab program has shown that providing space and processes for knowledgeable community members to collaborate with each other, innovation experts, and decision-makers can create a culture of innovation, enabling new solutions for ongoing issues to come to the forefront.
This bottom-up innovation approach allows grassroots efforts to communicate and co-create solutions with government and organizational bodies in new ways, for the benefit of all.
How can we demonstrate the impact of social innovation in advancing the SDGs? This case study is part of the Social Innovation Impact initiative that highlights innovators across Canada tackling complex challenges and driving positive change for people and the planet.
This project, in partnership with The Winnipeg Boldness Project and Maison de l’innovation sociale (MIS), is funded by the Government of Canada’s Sustainable Development Goals Funding Program.
