November 22 is National Housing Day - a day dedicated to raising awareness about housing and homelessness in Canada.
In recognition of this day, we are excited to share ALL of our articles on housing and building in one place - everything from what there is a housing crisis, to how can we use church-owned land into a legacy that houses those in needs for years to come.
- What do we mean when we talk about a housing crisis?
- How can churches continue to lift up communities through redevelopment?
- What are the barriers to building and how do we remove them?
- What is EHM doing as housing leader in Toronto?
I hope that these resources will inspire a sense of hope that we CAN change what is happening in the city we love and call home!
Moving through a Merger Process
EHM’s Senior Director of Programs and Client Care recently won an award for her leadership during a 2021 merger between EHM and Portland Place, a small, 45 unit housing provider. Jennifer was recognized in particular for how she engaged staff and clients throughout the whole process. We sat down with Jennifer to hear more behind her strategy. What motivated EHM and Portland Place to merge? It’s become really hard for small housing providers to succeed in the current climate. It certainly wasn’t easy to build housing like Portland Place in the 1990s, but a lot has changed since then. Portland…
Evangel Hall Mission
Faith Based Housing and Redevelopment at the Ontario Non-profit Housing Association Provincial Conference
Every year in October, the Ontario Non-profit Housing Association (ONPHA) hosts a provincial conference that brings together people to learn and share about everything from building, growing, to managing housing. Two major themes came out this year – the first looked at the struggles of small housing providers, and the second was at the challenges that faith-based communities face when trying to build new housing. Some of the issues that were raised throughout the conference include: Small housing providers aren’t sustainable and are rapidly exploring mergers and amalgamations During the 1990s, there was a lot of building of small apartments…
Evangel Hall Mission
More Than Just Housing, We Need to Build Community
By Ainsley Chapman, Executive Director, Evangel Hall Mission As more and more church properties are being sold to developers and private owners for housing or businesses, churches across the country in big cities and in small rural communities and of all denominations, have started important conversations about the future of their church land and buildings. One of those conversations is the potential of redeveloping church land to help provide affordable housing to help slow the housing crisis, even if it means there are fewer financial resources made from the property. This is an exciting time to be dreaming and planning…
Evangel Hall Mission
When Grief Prevents Imagining a New Future
It is bound to come up quickly in the conversation at any gathering of church folk, whether in a formal setting of a Session or presbytery meeting, or maybe just a coffee shop: how ill-equipped we feel to find a new role for the church in the rapidly changing environment of our world. We face declining numbers of people coming to church and a changing community in which we minister. We have questions of financial viability, and perhaps a building that may or may not effectively serve our congregation’s needs, let alone the community around us. Many of us have…
Evangel Hall Mission
What Does It Mean to be Stewards of Our Land?
By the Rev. Rebecca Jess, Armour Heights Presbyterian Church in Toronto Ont., and Vice President, Evangel Hall Mission Board of Directors Land is important in the Bible. We hear a lot about it in the earliest books: promises from God around land, Israelites seeking land, the releasing of land at Jubilee, to name a few. Land is important. Land sustains, nurtures and grows us. Land is what we live upon. It’s where you take root. Raise children. Source food. Build community. Set up places of worship, education and health care. Home is an equally important concept. Home can and should…
Evangel Hall Mission
About Canada’s Affordable Housing Crisis
One of the most commonly asked questions I have addressed in the past year is: “We see so much homelessness in our community—how can we help?” To understand how we can help, it’s important to first understand a bit about how we try to move people who are homeless out of shelters and into housing. One way to visualize housing is on a continuum—the way that the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation has done. In this visual, you can picture a community with a range of different types of housing. Emergency Shelter: Someone might stay here anywhere from a few…
Evangel Hall Mission
Download the above articles here