Jessica Barrett is an award-winning journalist and a former senior editor at Vancouver Magazine. Her own experience with the challenges of housing affordability led her to write her first book, No Place Like Home: The Missing Key to Our Housing Crisis. She spoke to Christopher White about rising costs, community-led housing and what makes a place feel like a home.

CHRISTOPHER WHITE: Tell me about your own housing journey.

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JESSICA BARRETT: I’ve been on a similar journey as many Canadians, particularly those under 50. I moved to Vancouver for university and fell in love with it. But in our society, your only real chance at stability is to buy a home. I was this mid-30s successful journalist, renting an apartment in downtown Vancouver. I had a full-time job in my field at a high-profile magazine, yet I couldn’t see how I could stay in the city I loved and make the rent and have any kind of quality of life. So I gambled and went to Calgary, but the housing crisis is here too. It’s not just a Vancouver or Toronto thing — it’s everywhere.

I did manage to buy a house in Calgary, but that hasn’t spared us from the chaos of the housing market. Our neighbourhood is locked in battles over development proposals. The renters in our community are constantly getting evicted and pleading for places to live. The homeless population in Calgary has increased considerably since we moved here.

CW: How did housing shift from being a place to live to........

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