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Affordable Housing Update: HSH
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- 16 hours ago
- 5 min read
There’s no place like home. This is at the heart of Home Suite Hope’s (HSH) work moving single parents from homelessness, or precarious housing, to stability.
HSH works from a housing-first philosophy… having a home enables a single parent to more successfully stabilize with childcare, counselling, and post-secondary education or employment training, which results in housing and life stability for that family into the future.
HSH’s goal is for single parents to support market value rent upon exiting our program.
Besides wraparound supports, HSH provides rental subsidies to its participants, but did you know that rental subsidies cost $14,400 annually?
Halton Region covers 15 subsidies for HSH and the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services (MCSS) covers 25.
But HSH has 51 participants and others calling every day seeking assistance.
We must fundraise, to cover our programming, but also this gap in rental supports – and even if we successfully raise the funds, have met an increasingly challenging market with a lack of available units and a significant lack of affordable units.
That makes us truly grateful to our affordable housing partners.
After the COVID-19 pandemic and the havoc it wreaked on the housing market, both skyrocketing costs and plummeting availability, HSH struggled more than ever to secure affordable housing for its participants – or faced turning away families who needed help to change the trajectory of generational poverty.
That’s when HSH welcomed Flight for Hope. Oakville resident Callum Wallace circumnavigated the globe in a single-engine plane raising funds for affordable housing and raising awareness of HSH.
In the years since Callum safely landed back home, HSH has welcomed other partners who became aware of our work and ongoing challenge to access affordable housing for the single parents and children in our programming.
Today, as we stand ready to embark on a new project: Post Residences Inc., we are eager to share our story, progress to date and thank those who’ve already joined our ‘team’ in this cause.
And, with our new partnership receiving unanimous approval May 4 from the Town of Oakville Planning Council to move ahead, invite others to join our ‘team’ in this cause as we will need help from our community to make the dream a reality – community supporters like those who already assist us faithfully.
Besides our community partners, volunteers and programming supporters, some donors specifically help us raise rental subsidies.
Individual donors - like Lisa and Jim Helsdon through the Larry and Gerry Wilson Fund held by the Oakville Community Foundation and Sharon and Blair Richardson - donate so that their family provides a rental subsidy for an HSH family for an entire year.
On other fronts, DHWESTVIEW Properties provides HSH access to affordable rental apartments. It notifies us of units available and gives us first right of refusal on them.
We are thrilled to celebrate one year of partnership with DHWESTVIEW Properties — a collaboration that has made a lasting difference in the lives of single parents and low-income families by helping provide safe, stable, and supportive housing.
HSH also developed a partnership with One Urban Developments Inc., which provides an affordable rental apartment in a building on Old Bronte Road and has committed to do so for eight years. That partnership has created new opportunities for a family to rebuild, grow, and look toward the future with hope and confidence.
In late 2025 ARGO Developments Inc., through its Vice President of Corporate Affairs Adine Carter, heard of HSH’s struggle with affordable housing and subsequently made two townhouses near Dundas and Sixth Line in Oakville available to two of our program participants. The participants and their children moved in just ahead of the winter holidays at the end of 2025 and ARGO further supported them by donating window coverings, beds and even towels.
Yet another partnership with HomeStarts Inc. that’s been in the works for some time, saw ground broken this spring on a building at 17 Guelph Street in Georgetown that will bring five affordable units to HSH participants in Halton Hills. That will offer options to our participants using a Sheridan College bursary to attend post-secondary education and attending Sheridan’s Brampton campus.
Last year, HSH also partnered with Halton Women’s Place to offer Haven to Home, a one-year program that houses women and their children from the local shelter as they stabilize in their lives as a result of domestic abuse. Haven to Home is funded by the Ontario government and the two local agencies have been supported by the Halton Faith Network and Garth Brown, who are networking to create affordable housing units by raising awareness of the potential for homeowners to create up to three Additional Residential Units (ADU) on their existing property.
HSH Executive Director Sara Cumming attended a May 11 information meeting held at Port Nelson Church in Burlington – the second such meeting this year and very well-attended.
Lastly, our newest collaboration with Community Living Oakville (CLO), Milton Transitional Housing, Oakville Senior Citizens’ Residence (OSCR) and Halton Women’s Place (HWP) – Post Residences Inc. – was recently unanimously approved by the Town of Oakville’s Planning Council and would bring potential for 28 affordable units for HSH on Sixth Line in Oakville.
This is a proposed six-storey, mixed use residential building containing a ground-level daycare and 190 affordable rental apartment units above.
The unanimous Town Council support is a major milestone for the project and for the broader vision we have all been working toward: a 100% affordable housing community that brings together housing, supports, childcare, food access, community programming, and research in a way that can make a real difference in Oakville and beyond.
This project is based on a model that is not only 100% affordable, but also grounded in partnership, community integration, and long-term housing stability. It is not simply a development application, but a community-backed response to a very real need, yet there is still a great deal of work ahead. It will now move into the next critical stages, including Site Plan Approval, building permits, and securing the financing required to bring the project to construction and ultimately to occupancy.
This venture will require fundraising – and lots of it. HSH is ready to step into that challenge.
We are deeply grateful to all our affordable housing partners for their unwavering support, generosity, and shared commitment to strengthening our community. Together, we are creating meaningful change, and we look forward to continuing this impactful journey to assist single parents and families in need with a view to changing the trajectory of generational poverty for individuals and families in our community.
For additional insight into the affordable housing issue locally, visit:
