Sotomayor, LuisaYamaki, Akanee2025-11-252025-11-252025-08-31Major Paper, Master of Environmental Studies, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York Universityhttps://hdl.handle.net/10315/43442This Major Paper examines the relational needs of food and housing insecurity, exploring how Community Land Trusts (CLTs) as a community centred, decommodified movement can currently address material needs. Canada is facing a dual crisis of housing and food insecurity, with nearly half of renters living in inadequate or unaffordable housing and over one-quarter of households experiencing food insecurity, revealing deep structural inequities that extend beyond individual need to societal questions of health, community, and care ethics. This study critically examines how CLTs in Toronto are attempting to integrate food and housing security, and how fragmented, solutionist approaches in planning and policy, often downloaded onto NGOs, limit their ability to meet community needs. Applying relational care ethics, I explore how planning might recenter social needs and move away from the commodified and financialized housing system. Congruent with the literature, my research emphases that CLTs, as a tool within the existing framework of neoliberal, capitalist and colonial understanding of land use, cannot be liberative on their own, but offer an alternative that can be leveraged towards greater mobilisation. CLTs are gaining momentum and popularity in planning theory and practice, promoted as a best practice to address structural issues in housing, yet their capacity is constrained by the very policy and economic structures that necessitate them. The research employed a qualitative case study of Toronto CLTs, drawing on literature review, document and policy analysis, and thirteen semi-structured interviews. Participants included CLT organizers and staff in Toronto, Nova Scotia, and Boston, alongside urban planners, food security workers, and academic experts. Data were analyzed thematically to identify both opportunities and barriers to integrating food and housing security through CLTs. Findings highlight persistent policy silos and structural barriers that limit CLTs’ ability to fully address food and housing insecurity, while also illustrating their potential to bring together grassroots movements in housing and food justice as a way to holistically address interconnected needs. This research contributes to planning scholarship and practice by illuminating the relational dimensions of food and housing insecurity and identifying the limitations and possibilities of CLTs within Canada’s current crisis.enCommunity Food InsecurityAffordable housingInequalitySocial policyCommunity planningCommunity land trustsResearch Paper