Special feature in honour of International Women’s Day: An interview with Cheryll Case, founder of CP Planning

Cheryll Case is on a mission to solve a big problem: the lack of economic inclusion of racialized and underhoused people in the planning and development industry — and she knows exactly how to do it. The Roadmap for Redevelopment Plans to Confront Systemic Racism provides a clearly laid-out solution: inclusive neighbourhood planning hubs supported by strategic planning, mentorship, and vertical integration between grassroots and mainstream organizations.

Even before the November 2022 release of the Roadmap, a program that has garnered substantial financial support via the CMHC Housing Supply Challenge, Cheryll has been a leading voice in planning with a human rights approach. She launched her career with Protecting the Vibrancy of Residential Neighbourhoods, a 2017 report which was published in the Toronto Star. The same year, she began consulting and, in 2018, formally incorporated CP Planning as a non-profit planning organization focused on building bridges between stakeholders and communicating public interests in city building.

Other highlights include being the inaugural Early Career Canadian Urban Leader at the University of Toronto, co-chair of the Knowledge Mobilization Committee of the Balanced Supply of Housing Node of the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative program, and co-editor and author of House Divided: How the Missing Middle will Solve Toronto’s Affordability Crisis.

1) What motivated you to pursue a career in planning?
I decided to go into planning when I learned about the role professionals have in protecting our natural environment. It’s the urban planner who is there to facilitate relationship building between the private sector, the public sector, and the non-profit sector so as to be coordinated in achieving shared outcomes.

2) Historically, women have had a minor role in planning and racialized women an even lesser role, a subject wrote about in House Divided. How is that changing?
We are in a time where women are really some of the industry’s most respected and impactful leaders. In my career, I’ve always looked up to Zahra Ebrahim. Zahra Ebrahim is trained as an architect but is now an industry leader due to her work innovating how we build cities. Zahra’s continued growth and impact in these spaces is an indicator of improving social equity within the industry. Also, Naama Blonder is doing amazing work as a planner architect. We’re really in a space now where women innovators are leading some of the most impactful discussions in terms of having our built environment reflect our social values.
 
House Divided really helped to solidify that the discussion around the missing middle is one to be addressed. Popular engagement with that book shows that the broader public really wants to see progress on these matters. Since 2020, via my start up, Partna Housing, I have been working hard to ensure we have the financial tools available to build and provide affordable housing through typology.
  
3) What do we need to do or who do we need to support to encourage more inclusivity in the planning profession for racialized women?
In order to see more racialized women thrive, it’s important to support organizations who have exemplified a true commitment to addressing systemic barriers experienced by these groups. In particular, I encourage mainstream planning organizations to develop business relationships with racialized women-led smaller urban businesses. If you are a larger planning corporation looking for a sub-consultant, there are amazing organizations out there who would be thrilled to have a discussion with you on how they can support you and the client to achieve project objectives. CP Planning certainly would be happy to support. Our non-profit is predominantly people of colour and over half are women of colour. By working with us, you are helping to build more inclusivity into the planning profession.
  
4) CP Planning has grown from being one person in 2017 to 10 people now. Tell us about that journey.
Growing from one full-time person to 10 has been quite the journey. It started with just me in 2017. I was encouraged by the response to my Protecting the Vibrancy of Residential Neighbourhoods report to prepare research proposals and seek funding for them. So, I went directly into consulting and, from there, continued to build and grow projects. The first project was $10,000, then the next one was double that, and the next one was double that. I continued to grow the size and scope of the projects CP Planning retained and implemented.
 
The most recent growth came in August as a result of our success in our application for funding for the Roadmap for Redevelopment Plans to Confront Systemic Racism. But for the first five years, it was just me with some temporary staff. Being successful in the application is really what’s going to enable us to be sustainable and achieve our mission of coordinating across sectors for alignment and investment in infrastructure to uphold human rights to housing and cultural opportunities.
  
5) The CMHC Housing Supply Challenge has been a turning point for CP Planning. What was the process like? What does it mean to your work to have been awarded funding?
I was working with the City of Brampton full-time when the opportunity to apply for the CMHC Housing Supply Challenge arose. I saw this as a great opportunity to shift away from simply doing small-scale projects to really having the support that is needed to enact systemic change. I left the Brampton job so I could focus on this opportunity. I had about four weeks to prepare the first-stage application. I have really great relationships with folks in Toronto as well as in Peel Region, so I was able to get all that together within four weeks and submit the first-stage application.
 
In November 2022, I got the letter of notice of the success of the application, and I was elated. It was just so exciting to imagine what that would open up for the communities I work with. The community organizations working to address poverty are substantially underfunded and under-supported. That first-stage funding didn’t just facilitate our securing of millions of dollars to do human rights-oriented planning, it enabled CP Planning to have a proper fighting chance to grow our work with communities to ensure marginalized communities are validated and properly respected as key stakeholders in the economy and outcomes of planning neighbourhoods.
  
6) Tell us about the Roadmap for Redevelopment Plans to Confront Systemic Racism and implementation plans thus far.
We are really getting deep into the implementation phase. We’ve completed hiring our team and we’re now really transforming this very thorough plan and working on implementing it. We have a partnership agreement with the University of Toronto Infrastructure Institute to deliver mentorship to non-profits led by and serving racialized populations to help them prepare affordable housing projects.
 
We’re also really excited about the work we’re doing now to host a series of workshops with the broader housing industry to explore alignment on the problems leading to a lack of affordable housing and the solutions to overcome those barriers.
 
We’re also going to be soon launching the Roadmap Advisory Committee. This is a committee that will be meeting quarterly to provide advice and to share knowledge across industries — from finance to development, to policy, to the trades, and to building — and to have all those folks come together in one room to talk about the Roadmap and the ways we can align going forward to achieve maximum impact.
  
7) The demand is very high for the work you do and yet there have been challenges. What is behind those challenges?
The first project I ever did at a large scale was called Housing in Focus. After I secured the funding, I was able to, within four months, develop partnerships with eight community-based non-profits to co-design with them to implement workshops to analyze that information then publish that information. To be able to do all of that within four months when I was relatively new to the industry — this was in 2018 — speaks to how much demand there is for this work. But we have to see fulsome support to continue conversations with these communities. That’s why the Roadmap is so important. And that’s also why, in the application, I requested a substantial amount of money. I know that if I had gone with an amount that would’ve been more responsive to CP Planning’s size at the time, it would not be responsive to the scale of the issue. There is a need to rapidly scale human rights-oriented community planning. In the process of developing the Roadmap, there were very senior members of this industry who were telling me: “Your solution was needed 20 years ago.” That really, again, affirmed to me that this big task I was taking on was something I needed to do because, frankly said, it was needed and has been needed for a long, long time.
 
I would also like to say that in the six years that I’ve been developing relationships with communities, we’ve learned so much that we can then apply to this work. We know we’re ready to go ahead with it, and we’re really excited and thrilled for the partnerships that we’ve developed and are deepening now with the support of this funding.
  
8) Can you give us some examples of the successes or potential successes for more inclusivity in neighbourhood planning? What is making them more successful?
In Little Jamaica, the Oakwood Vaughn Community Organization, a local volunteer-lead residents association, effectively organizes to advance inclusive planning in their neighbourhood. This is a group of residents and a resident association that organized to support a homeless shelter to open up in their neighbourhood. They are doing incredible work now to engage in the planning process. I have the privilege of working with them, learning from them, and also giving back to them.
 
In Peel Region, there’s an incredible camaraderie between three of the larger charities. These three charities serve completely different populations, but they are all aligned in understanding that the non-profit sector, the community service sector, must be validated in the community planning process in order for our society to actually address the housing supply issue. They’re doing their best to engage with the issues, but there is not enough support and coordination to help them to really dive into the solutions. What the Roadmap does is help their process of transitioning to be more involved and better reflected in local, provincial, federal planning matters.
 
I think what’s making community organizations successful is their commitment to the well-being of their communities. They responded to COVID-19 and had to rapidly adapt their programming to provide services to those who are most marginalized. And they’re doing so even with shrinking resources and growing demand. They are there and they’re not going to give up on their communities. That’s why the Roadmap exists.
  
9) What’s your message for other women, specifically racialized women, who aspire to planning as a career?
First, find someone in the industry who inspires you. That has been incredibly valuable to me. Zahra Ebrahim is the person I’ve always looked up to, and she has served as an advisor to me across my years in this industry. Second, keep trying your best and keep exploring what resonates with you. Have a mentor/advisor you look up to and keep trying even if you have to try things that make you a little bit uncomfortable. For example, for myself, when I graduated, I thought I would graduate and get a job and things would be easy. That wasn’t the path that was there for me, so I had to keep trying and that, for me, meant creating a corporation, creating a website — because there wasn’t any organization doing the work I wanted to see done. I had to create it myself and that was incredibly hard to do, but thankfully, the reward did come.