Real Solutions for Ottawa's Housing and Homelessness Crisis.

Our City Starts With Home: Scaling Up Non-Profit Housing in Ottawa, presenting on May 3rd.

The Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa will present a report to Ottawa’s Planning and Housing Committee on May 3rd called “Our City Starts With Home: Scaling Up Non-Profit Housing in Ottawa. Written by Dr. Carolyn Whitzman, and overseen by an Advisory Committee of community partners including Ottawa Community Housing and the Ottawa Aboriginal Coalition, this report is a rallying cry to ambitiously pursue much-needed non-profit housing to address the housing and homelessness crisis in Ottawa. 

“While there are many pieces to resolving the affordable housing and homelessness crisis, non-profit housing supply is at its core. We must build at scale, and our ambition must match the need.”                                                   - Executive Director, Kaite Burkholder Harris 

Three years ago, Ottawa’s City Council was the first in Canada to unanimously declare a housing and homelessness emergency. Since that time, the price of housing has risen to alarming levels. Rental prices have increased by 20 per cent from 2021 to 2022 alone. Fewer and fewer people can afford to live in this city, and far too many are on the edge of homelessness due to lack of affordability. It’s clear that we have yet to meaningfully respond to the root causes of this emergency.

The report is intended to be an urgent "how to" for the City of Ottawa to increase new non-profit housing, using the tools and levers available, and identifies what's needed from other levels of government to make it happen.

Read the report here: