We focus our work on concrete ways to reduce, prevent, and end homelessness.
Starts With Home Campaign
Starts With Home is a city-wide non-partisan campaign to build public and political support for addressing the housing affordability crisis in Ottawa. The coalition of over 40 sector partners assembled a platform of actions for City Council to follow and build on.
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.
We look forward to sharing the final report with you in early 2023.
Expert Steering Team
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?
There is a growing demand for social housing in Canada. The Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa is collaborating with researchers at the University of Ottawa to create a dashboard that will integrate existing databases of people waiting for social housing, people in the shelter system, and the available housing stock in a given community. The goal of the resulting system is to support communities in making informed decisions that address the specific social housing needs in their neighborhoods. This project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
We look forward to sharing the final product with you when it is published in 2023.
Systems Inventory
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 in 2023.
Housing Leadership School
In partnership with ACORN Ottawa, and funded by Ottawa Community Foundation, the Alliance co-designed and delivered the Housing Leadership School, a series of webinars, toolkits, and supportive FAQ content, to empower citizens to better understand housing policy, to advocate for change, and to equip tenants to know their rights and protect their right to housing.
Vote Housing is a national non-partisan campaign, started during the 2021 federal election, designed to engage and mobilize Canadians to form a grassroots movement to rally public and political support for ending homelessness and housing need in Canada.
On National Housing Day 2022, we called on the federal government to implement theVote Housing platformas part of a cost-of-living relief package. Not doing so will keep forcing families into housing insecurity.
Vote4Housing Ontario is a provincial non-partisan campaign, driving five key recommendations that will help build, protect, and support deeply affordable community housing in Ontario. You can read the platform here.
Help us maximize our impact to ensure that Ontario's provincial government prioritizes deeply affordable housing. Take action and spread the word by visiting vote4housing.ca
We know the solution to homelessness is affordable housing for all. Yet it can feel impossible to find an affordable home. Illegal renovictions are a part of the reason why our neighbourhoods are rapidly changing.
Aimed at housing 100 households in 100 days, the Housing Blitz was a community-wide effort to get people housed quickly and learn more about the barriers to affordable housing in our city. The initiative was led by the City of Ottawa and the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, working closely with Indigenous housing partners.
#Hotels2Homes
Alliance members and supporters successfully lobbied the City to fund the purchase of empty hotels and motels for emergency housing during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a notable step in implementing a long-term solution to the housing crisis in Ottawa and creating a healthier, safer, and more prosperous community for everyone.
Civic Leaders Summit
The 2018 Civic Leaders Summit brought together community members, housing leaders, and City staff for a discussion on the opportunities, tools, and resources available for civic leaders to impact homelessness and affordable housing outcomes in Ottawa.
A Way Home Ottawa
A Way Home Ottawa was born out of the desire to build a more integrated system of support for young people who are homeless in Ottawa. Connecting youth services across the City, A Way Home Ottawa ultimately resulted in a comprehensive plan to prevent and end youth homelessness through a systems approach.
Homelessness was at a level of crisis when Ottawa City Council declared the housing emergency in January 2020 but the situation has only worsened. Not only is Ottawa not building enough new low rent affordable housing, we are losing much of the older, affordable housing stock.
The Ottawa Giving Project is a collaborative effort to make donating winter items easy to people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Due to COVID, community agencies have less space and fewer volunteers to sort through donations. This community partnership continues on with Gifts In Kind Ottawa.