When We Leave: The Human Cost of Housing Unaffordability

‘When We Leave’ is a digital exhibition that visualizes a Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area on the brink, where the people who power our communities, can no longer afford to call them home.

Bringing together immersive visuals, personal storytelling, and real-world data, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on how housing unaffordability weakens the foundations of our region’s livability.

It showcases how our teachers, tradespeople, healthcare staff, artists, and service workers are integral to the social and economic fabric of the region, yet many are being priced out of the places they sustain.

Both a warning and a call to action, ‘When We Leave’ explores the threads that connect our collective well-being to the workers who make city life possible. It asks viewers to reflect on what will be lost when middle-income workers can’t afford to stay.

It invites viewers to join Mission: Affordable, CivicAction’s public awareness campaign, that recognizes that while the impacts of the housing crisis are already here, so too is the opportunity to work collectivity and do things differently.