Starts With Home is a city-wide non-partisan campaign to build public and political support for addressing the housing affordability crisis in Ottawa.
Alliance supporters can learn, connect in, and take action on the Starts With Home website; our new space for public education and mobilization. Join the conversation!
The Alliance has received a Maytree grant to develop a report on scaling up nonprofit housing in Ottawa. Working with Dr. Carolyn Whitzman, Adjunct Professor and Researcher at the University of Ottawa as the lead author and researcher, the report will include a map of suitable and well located government owned sites that could be used for nonprofit housing; a policy scan of policies that can scale up the amount and affordability of nonprofit housing development; and financial proforma modeling for four actual sites in Ottawa.
To truly create system-level change, we need the expertise of people with firsthand experience of homelessness. Our Expert Steering Team works together to bring their knowledge, strengths, and skills to the Alliance and working groups across the sector. Their work impacts the way we create policies and processes to prevent and end homelessness in Ottawa.
Are you or your organization interested in working with the Expert Steering Team?
Empower yourself with our resources! Explore webinars, toolkits, and FAQs to deepen your understanding of housing policy, drive change through advocacy, and protect your right to housing.
Understanding people’s pathways in the homelessness system is an important part of creating robust coordinated access where people can get the help they need while only telling their story once. Taking inventory of all of the poverty-reduction services, agencies, and programs will help us build a more interconnected system of shared resources. Working together effectively helps people better access the resources they need. Together, we’re greater than the sum of our parts.
We look forward to sharing with you the results of our system inventory project.
On January 14, 2025, we presented to the City of Ottawa's Planning Committee about the proposed municipal renoviction bylaw.
We know that renovictions can lead to homelessness. At minimum, a renoviction means that tenants are forced to find other housing almost guaranteed to be unaffordable in our current housing market.
You can watch or read our full remarks below:
On November 26, 2024, we presented to the City of Ottawa's Community Services Committee about the City's 2025 budget.
When more and more people in Ottawa and beyond are struggling to meet their basic needs, it's time to invest in prevention.
You can read our full remarks below:
On November 20, 2024, we presented to Ottawa's City Council about the City's draft budget.
While the proposed budget includes modest increases in operations funding, as well as stable and predictable capital funding, the needle continues to move in the wrong direction on housing in Ottawa.
We presented the remarks below to contend that the only way to truly end homelessness and tackle the housing crisis in our community is through scaling up non-profit housing.
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