The AccèsLogis Québec Program: 15 years of Partnership Between the State and the Social Economy

Over the past 15 years, the Quebec government’s public policy on social and community housing has been based mainly on the AccèsLogis program. Under this program, some 23,000 new social housing units have been developed. While the program’s regulations and funding are governed by the public sector (primarily provincial, secondarily federal), its development and implementation rely heavily on the participation of social and solidarity economy (SSE) stakeholders, and particularly on the input of housing Non Profit Organizations (NPOs) and co operatives. In other words, SSE stakeholders play a significant role in program implementation (co-production) and in its definition and design (co-construction), to use a distinction favoured in this paper’s conceptual framework (Vaillancourt, 2009).

This appraisal of the AccèsLogis program is based on research that was mostly done in partnerships since 1995. Our paper is divided into two parts: first, we present the context in which the AccèsLogis program emerged, along with its main characteristics; then we show that the program represents a social innovation in which SSE stakeholders make a major contribution while participating not only in the implementation of the program (co-production), but also in defining its architecture (co-construction).

Canadian Review of Social Policy pi.library.yorku.ca