How Habitat for Humanity is bringing home ownership within reach for local families

In its largest project to date, Habitat for Humanity Greater Ottawa is building affordable townhomes in Nepean, all of which will be made available for ownership to local families in need. But after only one week, the organization was forced to pause applications, not due to any issue, but because of a surge in demand and interest.

Located at 40 Beechcliffe St. in Nepean, Beechcliffe Homes is a 33-unit townhome development near Woodroffe Avenue that is expected to be ready for occupancy in February of 2027. 

The idea is “housing done differently,” explained Sara Cooper, CEO of Habitat for Humanity (HFH) Greater Ottawa. It’s a pilot project and a collaboration between the provincial government, HFH, the City of Ottawa and Caivan to explore “if we can deliver affordable housing faster,” said Cooper.

On Jan. 29, the organization opened applications for the homes. On Feb. 9, they were forced to close the portal and pause the applications due to an overwhelming response. 

More than 1,100 people submitted an expression of interest. Of those, 550 filled out pre-qualification forms. In total, more than 250 people were invited to submit a full application. The development has the capacity for only 33 households.

“We're still making our way through that list [of applications],” said Cooper. “The speed and scale of the response is something we've never seen before. Based on the volume of interest and the number of people who made it through the pre-qualification portion, there's a significant demand for affordable home ownership in Ottawa.”

The homes are available under HFH’s blended mortgage model, meaning families must prove a minimum household income and then partner with HFH for income-based mortgages.

Families purchase their homes at fair-market value with affordable monthly mortgage payments that are capped at 30 per cent of household income. Under the HFH model, no down payment is required, and a partial interest-free mortgage is held by HFH. Families are responsible for paying household utilities, insurance and other expenses.

The organization has operated in the Ottawa region for more than three decades, with homes built and delivered to local families in a number of communities across the city.

In 2020, HFH completed a 15-unit development in Kemptville, marking 100 homes built in the region. 

“While we certainly celebrated that milestone, we also equally acknowledge that in the context of a housing crisis, we need to be doing more, and we need to be doing more faster,” said Cooper. “And so when this pilot project [in Nepean] became an opportunity for us, we jumped at it.

“We've set a new goal of building 100 homes in the next five years. And so this project allows us to really work towards that goal quickly.”

The site is just off Woodroffe Avenue and falls in Coun. Sean Devine’s ward of Knoxdale-Merivale. The development will be on City-owned land, which Devine said he advocated for. 

“Knowing that the City has an obligation to try and use our municipally-owned land for housing, I was able to get the City to allocate a portion of it for affordable housing, which is how it became developed by Habitat for Humanity,” he told the Ottawa Lookout.

He also said he is confident about the quality of work that Caivan will bring to the homes and that he’s excited for the new families to come to the neighbourhood.

To support the pilot project, the Province of Ontario is investing $3.4M and the City of Ottawa is providing the land, plus an additional $6M  — including $3M received through Ontario’s Building Faster Fund. As the builder, Caivan is prioritizing innovative construction to speed up timelines, efficiency and affordability.

“Since this isn’t really a large development…I don’t expect there to be a strong adverse impact on the community,” he explained. “Since most, if not all, of these homes will be going to families who are first-time homeowners, I think the community will benefit from having so many more families with kids looking to lay down roots in their new community..”

The development also addresses the City’s need for affordable, family-sized middle-housing, said Cooper, which is “almost non-existent” in the city.

“What we're hearing from applicants as to why they're applying for a Habitat home. It could be that their rent is too high, that their housing costs are just affordable, that they're struggling to save for a down payment, or they're unable to qualify for a conventional mortgage,” she said. 

“There is a huge gap.”

Habitat for Humanity Greater Ottawa is one of the only organizations that works to offer affordable home ownership, filling a gap in the housing spectrum that is increasingly under pressure.

The spectrum — beginning with unsheltered conditions and ending with market-value ownership — also consists of emergency shelters, transitional housing and affordable renting, but gateways to affordable homeownership are few and far between.

Kaite Burkholder Harries, executive director of the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, said Habitat for Humanity fills a vital gap in the system and helps to create “flow” through the system.

“We’re seeing people who enter shelters get stuck in shelters, because there's no supportive or transitional or permanent supportive housing or affordable housing in the private market. You see people who are in supportive housing who would like to live in a private market, but they can't find affordable rents. And it just kind of goes along that spectrum,” she told the Ottawa Lookout. “It really is a need.”

The Alliance to End Homelessness is a member-based organization representing more than 75 local agencies that are working together to end homelessness. 

“Lots of conversations we're having with members right now are about ‘how do we support scaling of non-market housing?’ And there's really cool projects happening with local housing leaders, where they're looking at collaborating on equity so multiple properties under one entity, and then having different services provide the in-house supports for people who may need it,” she explained. 

The Alliance is based on the belief that while ending homelessness is absolutely doable, “ending poverty is a different thing.” That’s where organizations like HFB come in and can fill a gap for people who have a solid income and want to build equity but for whom market ownership is still unreachable.

HFH data from a Deloitte study shows that 64 per cent of Ontarians worry about sacrificing other basic needs in order to afford rent or mortgage payments, and more than 80 per cent believe homeownership is increasingly out of reach. 

“At the end of the day, we are a culture of homeowners in Canada, and so most people want to own, and having an opportunity to pursue that dream is meaningful for people,” said Burkholder Harris. “The idea of [HFH] really does fit into that spectrum of creating affordable housing and an opportunity for home ownership for people.

In 2011, Rebecca Panter moved from Edmonton, A.B. to Ottawa with her then-husband and her newborn son, Jack, to be closer to her family, who live near Toronto. 

When Panter and her husband separated, it was just her and Jack, and they began having difficulty finding safe and affordable housing for the two of them.

“We'd been kind of moving around, and I think we lived in like three different rentals, and moved out of them all for different reasons. Usually they’d raise the rent and we’d be priced out,” she explained. “The last rental I moved out of was because our unit had bed bugs. A few units around us all had bed bugs. So we had to basically leave everything behind and start again.”

At that time, Panter, a provincial public servant, was working in a new department within the Ministry of the Attorney General and working at the Landlord-Tenant Board. There, she and some colleagues were discussing some of the issues tenants face.

“I had mentioned that we had been kind of priced out a couple times, and that we had recently had to move because of our bed bug situation. And one of my colleagues, after our conversation, quietly pulled me aside and said, ‘Hey, have you ever heard of Habitat for Humanity?’”

When she had lived in Edmonton, Panter had volunteered on a Habitat build site, but she said she “didn’t fully know who Habitat was serving.”

“She mentioned to me that she and her family had applied a couple years earlier, and they had been accepted to partner with Habitat,” said Panter. “And she said that based on everything I had been talking about, it kind of made her think I’d be a good candidate.”

At that time, Jack was seven, and Panter had been trying to maintain a sense of stability and routine in his life despite having to frequently move. At one point, she drove across the city to take him to a familiar daycare that was nearby their previous apartment.

Then, after having to relocate four or five times throughout his life, they moved one final time in 2019 — when they got the keys to their new home.

“It was really hard to believe. To be honest with you, it took me a long time, because I had gone for so many years being unsettled and having experienced all the things that I had,” she said. “During the bed bug situation, we were so dependent on our landlord to handle the problem, but it just kept going on and on and on. and it eventually got to the point where I just had to leave. 

“We left everything behind, and when we moved into that last rental, we had nothing, and we just kind of like had accumulated some furniture over that couple of years that we lived there to try to rebuild,” said Parent. “So when we finally moved into the Habitat home, it took me a while to lose the feeling of ‘when is the other shoe going to drop? Like, this can't be as good as it feels’.”

According to data from HFH, nine in 10 Canadians are concerned about affordability and 4 in every 5 Canadians say homeownership is now a luxury. More than half of Ontarians reported spending 50 per cent or more of their household income on housing costs.

Of the homeowners who partner with HFH, a quarter are single parents.

“I think every parent will agree that what they want for their kids is just the best possible circumstances for them to be safe and secure and develop into the person that they need to develop into, and have as few obstacles as possible to do that,” said Panter. “Stability is a huge part of that, and our Habitat home has given us that stability. 

“I couldn't find that stability for us before Habitat. I don't know what our future would have been like… I don't know if we would have kept moving over and over and over again, and I certainly didn't want that for him.” she said. “I was doing the best that I could, but I was really thinking in the moment…Just kind of in this mode surviving and trying to make it work.

Jack, now in high school, has had the stability and security to find a solid group of friends, Panter says, and spends his afternoons riding his bike through the community. They are friendly with their neighbours and feel like members of the community, she said, now that they know they are there to stay.

HFH data found that 73 per cent of Habitat homeowners reported improved physical health after getting the keys; 79 per cent said their mental health had improved. More than 50 per cent have started volunteering in their community, and 50 per cent of parents say their children are doing better in school.

Across Canada, Habitat families have collectively earned $64.8 million more in income than they would have if they had remained renters.

“The first thing that I did when we moved in, and I had a better sense of what our financial situation was going to be, is I went to the bank and I set up the RDSP for him, and I set up regular payments,” said Panter. “So by the time he's ready to go to school, there's going to be money for him, like a good amount of money that I was not able to contribute to before. So there's that security for sure.”

She also added that there’s an added security of knowing that she and Jack both have a soft place to land, whatever may come. “It has changed so much,” she said, both in her son’s sense of stability and her own confidence and empowerment.

Before becoming a Habitat homeowner, Panter said a little more than 60 per cent of her income was going to rent, leaving next to nothing for car payments, groceries, and the other family and household expenses, and nothing left to be set aside for the future.

“Now, I think about the future. If he moves away, and he goes off to school, post-secondary, I can stay here, and he'll always be able to come back here, and his home will always be available to him no matter what his future holds,” said Parent. “If he has a family of his own, they can come back here, and he'll be able to remember the neighborhood and will have had celebrations and Christmases here.

“There are memories being made here. He's learning how to cook here, there are all these different things and memories that are going to be in this home, and it's going to be here for years to come.”