When Jean Stevenson talks about her connection to and work at CHFT, she smiles and says it was a very special and amazing experience. We all were “Just Kids.” She refers, of course, to singer-songwriter-artist Patti Smith’s memoir with that title about the heady time in the late 60s and early 70s when Smith and photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe, first met. Stevenson credits the success of the fledgling housing federation with the same kind of youthful energy and daring that characterized the Smith-Mapplethorpe creative collaboration.
So how did Jean Stevenson become involved? It was the early 70s, when Stevenson, an American, and her husband, a Scot, barely in their 20s, chose Canada as the country where they’d make their life together. They fell in love with the Beaches area of Toronto and happened upon a building, Kew Park Mansions, that was under renovation and owned by ForWard9, a scattered non-profit housing co-op composed of a number of buildings that were saved from demolition by resident activists in the rapidly changing Beaches of the 1970s.
Jean and her husband moved into ForWard 9 in 1974 and she soon became actively involved in the membership committee and served as chairperson. She thinks fondly back to how nice it was to move into a building that was both affordable and provided an immediate sense of community. Co-ops are like that.
Not long after, and despite having a good job in the private sector, Stevenson became aware of a position opening at a newly developing organization, CHFT, that would both support existing co-ops and develop new ones. She recalls being interviewed by Mark Goldblatt and Jon Harstone, two fellow CHFT Lifetime Members, in a room in the basement of Alexandra Park Co-op. She was offered and accepted the position and was thrust into a variety of roles in what was at the time a non-hierarchal staff structure.
It became clear her strength lay in developing and delivering training workshops and manuals for non-profit housing co-operative’s Board of Directors, committees, and staff. With newly acquired office space in what became the CityTV building, CHFT could conduct workshops to help meet its goal to reinforce the governance and management of the young co-ops that were popping up all over Toronto. Stevenson along with other CHFT staff were key to making all that happen. CHFT was recognized nationally within co-op housing as leading the way on implementing the 5th co-op principle, Education, Training, and Information, and so soon Jean Stevenson and fellow lifetime member, Marianne Moershel, were traveling across Canada training other new housing co-opers.
On CHFT’s development side, Stevenson took on a marketing and staff/committee training role, and is proud to have worked closely with the CHFT development team , on the development and marketing of several new co-ops, including Woodsworth Co-op in Toronto’s St. Lawrence neighbourhood and others in Scarborough.
With all its evening meetings, co-op work is not easy for parents of small children and so as a young mother, in the mid-1980s, Jean Stevenson left CHFT. Her impressive 40 year career since has included consulting in the broader co-op sector; coordinating a program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education on co-operative education; setting up a training and education program at the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association; being a founding member of the Toronto Alliance to End Homelessness; and ultimately being the Executive Director of Madison Community Services, a non-profit, community-based agency providing mental health case management, supportive housing, and programs and services designed for people with mental illness and addiction and who live below the poverty line. These roles all reflect her continuing passion for meaningful work in the affordable housing sector.
Her heart, however, has remained firmly rooted in co-op housing and she kept her hand in with regular consulting and training gigs for the Co-operative Housing Association of Ontario (now part of CHF Canada), CHF Canada, and the Agency for Co-operative Housing. Jean Stevenson is very proud that she was named a CHFT Lifetime Member in 2000. And we are too!
