Homelessness is no longer on the margins. It’s in every city, town, and rural region. Tent encampments. Overflowing shelters. Waitlists that stretch endlessly. 

Many community housing organizations feel helpless, unsupported, overextended, and under pressure from all sides. The suffering has become normalized. When we start designing systems to manage suffering instead of ending it, we’ve lost our way. 

I remember volunteering in the mid-90s, working out of the back of a van for an Indigenous organization supporting people on the streets of Toronto. The need was urgent then, but how many times worse is it now? We’ve known this crisis was coming. In many ways, we’ve known it for decades. And still, in too many jurisdictions, the response has been to kick the can down the road with a steady focus on stimulating private-sector development to address middle-class frustration and the assumption that the benefits will “trickle down.” 

But let’s be clear: a housing crisis is not just one thing.  It is:  

• A father and child spending another night in a shelter. 
• An elderly woman evicted so the unit can be flipped. 
• Hundreds of people living in tents because there are no options, no vacancies, and a safety net stretched far too thin. 
• A daughter who can’t afford a condo in the city where she was raised. 

And yet, while we express concern for the middle class, we respond to visible homelessness with paralysis or worse, criminalization.  The story that dominates the headlines is the middle-class housing crisis. The young couple who did everything right: good jobs, good credit, and still can’t buy a home. Their frustration resonates. It’s relatable. And it gets a response: Build more homes. Spur the market. Increase supply. Help the next generation get a foothold. 

But supply alone won’t solve this. Not when we’ve designed an entire system that treats housing as a commodity rather than a human right. Not when we rely almost exclusively on private developers to solve public problems. 

And within our own sector, the tension mirrors this policy divide. 
Discussions about our future too often become flashpoints. 

Many working on the front lines of homelessness push, rightfully, for deep core subsidies. Others focus on long-term viability and mixed-income models that allow portfolios to grow, diversify, and reduce reliance on unpredictable funding.

We need to stop treating these as opposing sides

The divide inside our sector mirrors the one playing out in public policy. Just as our organizations wrestle with how to meet immediate needs and build sustainable futures, governments are split between responding to visible homelessness and solving the affordability crisis for the next generation. 

In both cases, we’ve framed it as a choice, when it should be a plan. And part of that plan means rethinking the public narrative around community housing. Because here’s the truth: when community housing is strong, it helps everyone. When servers, early childhood educators, transit workers, newcomers, gig workers, and young professionals can afford to live where they work, that’s not mission drift, that’s mission success. 

When nonprofit and co-op housing is scaled to offer mixed-income, permanently affordable options, we impact the private market itself.  

We de-financialize housing.  

We stabilize rents.  

We expand choices.  

And we reduce the pressure on individuals to out-earn or out-bid just to secure a home. 

But we can’t get there with outdated tools or outdated policy approaches.  

We are long overdue for a sector-wide conversation not just about how to fund or operate, but about the regulatory, legislative, and policy reforms needed to let us grow. 
To offer dignity and shelter to those suffering now, and to build a system that holds everyone. 

The business model of community housing must change. Not because the mission has changed, but because the need has grown. Because the old tools don’t work anymore. 

And because we cannot meet today and tomorrow’s housing needs with yesterday’s playbook.