We invite you to read the HSH 2025 Annual Report

We are pleased to share that Home Suite Hope's Annual Report 2025 is now available online, in both digital and PDF formats. We invite you to review all that HSH accomplished in 2024 - the success stories and the people... donors, volunteers and supporters... who helped make it happen as well as the challenges faced and our strategy on moving forward.

A Message from HSH Executive Director Sara Cumming

As we welcome a new year, I find myself reflecting with deep gratitude on how far we have come together and on the extraordinary community that surrounds the families, staff, and mission of Home Suite Hope.

If 2024 was a year of stabilizing and strategizing, 2025 will be remembered as the year we chose momentum over retreat.

Rising housing costs and mounting fiscal pressures forced us into some of the most difficult decisions in our organization's history. We entered 2025 preparing to reduce the number of families we could serve and bracing for potential staffing cuts. For a moment, it seemed that

contraction was inevitable. Instead, because of your belief in this mission and the remarkable resilience of our team, Home Suite Hope experienced one of the most transformational years in our 20-year history.

In direct alignment with our strategic plan, we expanded our programming in ways that fundamentally changed what is possible for single-parent families in Halton. We launched two new programs, Pathways Forward and Haven to Home, ensuring that single parents who do not qualify for Homeward Bound still have a meaningful pathway to stability and self-sufficiency.

With these programs, we more than doubled the number of families we support in a single year.

For the first time, single fathers and working single parents were welcomed into our programs,

allowing us to meet long-standing needs that too often go unseen. At the same time, we made major strides in addressing the housing crisis that sits at the heart

of family homelessness.

This year, we secured three new affordable housing units one with One Urban and two with ARGO Development Corporation and advanced an ambitious partnership to create new units throughout Halton. Securing funding for rental subsidies will remain our main goal.

We ended the year with 41 families being supported through our programs, with 1 7 additional

families ready to begin in the first two months of the new year.

None of this progress was guaranteed. We closed 2024 with our first financial loss in seven years,

and uncertainty around housing funding threatened our ability to grow. But thanks to the

extraordinary work of our grant writing and development team and our partnership with Halton

Women's Place, we achieved a remarkable turnaround. We not only stabilized our operations, we

nearly doubled our program capacity and hired new staff to support the families now counting on

us.

As we look ahead, important work remains. We are continuing to rejuvenate our Board and must

now expand mentorship and Industry Council volunteer networks beyond Oakville. Third-party

fundraising events proved highly successful this year, and strengthening these efforts will be essential

to meeting our 2026 strategic goals. And while we secured a much-needed $40,000 increase to

our housing subsidy allotment, once our Oakville housing partnership is complete, we will require

$360,000 annually to sustain that level of support.

Through every challenge and every triumph, one truth has remained constant: the strength of this

community.

To our staff - thank you for the tireless frontline work you do every day.

To our donors - your generosity keeps our doors open and our programs alive.

To our community partners and event hosts - thank you for standing with us.

To our participants - your courage and determination inspire everything we do.

And to you, our supporters, thank you for believing in this mission so deeply. Your consistent, yearround support makes all the difference. Together, we have already achieved what once felt

impossible.

Together, we will continue building a community where every single parent can move

from crisis to stability - and from stability to hope.

Sara Cumming,

Executive Director, HSH

Read a Message from HSH Board Chair Emma Jarratt

Check out the HSH 2025 Financial Statement