Panel: Millennials’ Missing Middle

• Speakers:
  Albus Brooks, VP Milender White, Former City Councilman Denver
  Issi Romem, Principal and Founder, MetroSight
  Craig Sauvé, City Councillor & Special Advisor, City of Montréal
• Moderator:
  Mariela Alfonzo, Founder & CEO, State of Place

5 Key Takeaways

• 1. The housing sector is one of the main economic drivers for inequality. Housing is key to repairing divides between communities. The lack of affordable, accessible, family-friendly, and equitable housing has equity implications, accelerating structural racism and spatial injustices. We must build inclusive cities that bring together both workforce and higher-educated millennials so that everyone can work together. Repairing and building back the community is our reparation.
• 2. Land use is the city’s most powerful tool: The control of land plays a big role in making cities and housing more equitable and affordable for millennials. In Montreal, Craig Sauve explains the bylaw for a diverse metropolis that weaves in affordable, off-market housing into every construction permit in the city.
• 3. The collectivization of resources can help build urban equity: Cities offer dynamism to millennials, and the collectivization of shared, public resources is one way to incentivize millennials to stay urban, unlike their parents. Good public transit, green spaces, and carsharing are all ways to make urban living more affordable and equitable.
• 4. ‘Gentle’ densification can close the gap of homeownership rates between Black and white millennials: Allowing slow rates of densification can tackle the issue of resistance that so often perpetuates lower rates of homeownership among Black millennials.
• 5. Diversifying the housing stock will keep millennials in the city: (Only when diversity is no longer optical and corporate ownership is made truly representative, can wealth be restored to the Black community – reparations mean repair.)

Featured photo by Christopher Lin on Unsplash