In 2018, Bruce Lewis became an Honorary Lifetime Member of CHFT. His pivotal role with the organization, however, began decades earlier.
Bruce and his wife, Mary, moved into Campus Co-op at the University of Toronto shortly after they were married in 1966. They wanted to be part of something where everyone took responsibility and did not leave it to the landlord. This was before the word “empowerment” became popular.
One of the main things Bruce remembers from his time at Campus Co-op is that one month after moving in, monthly housing charges went up by 14 percent (from $105 to $120). This doesn’t seem so bad now.
At that time Campus Co-op was planning a large expansion by building an 840-unit addition. Bruce says this would have been fine except that it was decided to change its role to a non-credited alternative university. Bruce says he voted against this change at a Campus Co-op members’ meeting. Unfortunately, his side lost and Rochdale College was built but couldn’t meet its financial obligations. It failed mainly because it attracted a late-sixties hippie population that was not attuned to the business of running a housing co-op. Bruce and Mary moved in for about six months but couldn’t stand the all-night members’ meetings.
Bruce went to law school and articled at a Toronto law firm, Lang Michener. That firm worked on several co-op projects. One of them was Alexandra Park Co-op. As an articling student, Bruce had to go back forty years through the history of ownership of each of the houses that had once stood where the co-op was to be built. Bruce was deeply moved when he saw that almost every one of these houses was owned by a family and lost by them through foreclosure in the depression of the 1930s. Although they owned their houses, the families did not have long-term security,
Bruce left Lang Michener, and he and Nancy Collyer started Lewis & Collyer, where he still works.
Bruce Lewis has been CHFT’s lawyer and the lawyer for the CHF Canada Ontario Region for decades and has accomplished a great deal for the sector in that role. Some of his key achievements:
- He is proud of CHFT being an early adopter of the land trust model, a model of ownership that has attained more popularity today. As early as law school, Bruce saw that consolidating land in a land trust was a way to meet two goals: perpetual affordability and funding future development.
- Bruce was also a big part of ensuring by-laws, occupancy agreements, and other documents important to housing co-op governance are written clearly and in plain language, so that non-lawyers can use them effectively to reinforce the democratic process of co-op communities.
- Bruce helped respond to CMHC and Ontario Operating Agreements and the Housing Services Act and the Social Housing Reform Act after them. These are far from what Bruce would have wanted, but they are much better than they could have been because of his work.
- Finally, Bruce has left his legal mark on provincial legislation including the Co-operative Corporations Actand the Residential Tenancies Act, especially Eviction Law Reform, which helped co-ops reduce costs and more easily deal with some issues.
Just like he did when he moved into Campus Co-op 50 years ago, Bruce strongly believes that people have the right to decide for themselves. To achieve that, he explains legal ideas in a way that makes sense to boards and then lets the members and directors of the co-op – his client – make decisions that make sense for their community.
When asked how we get more co-ops built to allow more people the degree of autonomy co-op housing provides, Lewis says that all levels of government have to support co-ops. He says that CMHC, government bodies, banks and credit unions have had better financial experience with co-ops than with any other kind of housing. Since today’s trend is “public-private partnerships”, Bruce thinks we as a sector should engage more directly with private sector developers to show them working with co-ops is a win-win.
Bruce and Mary live in Toronto in a house they purchased 55 years ago. Bruce, a passionate mobiliary artist and photographer, sits in his office surrounded by pictures of his three children and four grandchildren. His face lights up when he shares that his eldest granddaughter is studying law at the University of Victoria. When Bruce received CHF Canada’s Ontario Region’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004, former CHFT Executive Director and fellow CHFT Lifetime Member, Alexandra Wilson, said having Bruce in the sector was a “stroke of luck for co-op housing.” And we agree with her.
