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When businesses donate to social housing, it’s a new paradigm

May 31st, 2010 · 1 Comment

I suspect that not many people get how unusual it is to have business leaders donating money directly to government to help create social housing. There certainly hasn’t been anything like this in Canada.

The closest you get is in the United States, where large foundations (using money derived from the earlier robber-baron capitalist endeavours, in some cases) will donate money and/or help broker complex deals for housing projects involving private developers, who get tax credits from the federal government, non-profits, community groups and more. Occasionally, there will be direct contributions from businesses into the mix.

What happened here in B.C. last week is really a new model, as I touched on briefly in my Globe article Friday.

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