Overview

What Is Reside?

Reside renovates vacant or under-utilized spaces into energy efficient affordable housing through partnerships with social enterprise contractors and local housing providers.

By creating employment opportunities and new units of deeply affordable housing with wraparound supports, Reside provides a tangible, targeted long-term solution to ending homelessness in Canada.

The Reside Process

01. Vacant property

We acquire vacant or under-utilized properties that require renovations in order to create new sustainable, affordable housing for people who are currently homeless or at risk of become homeless. Properties such as abandoned homes, heritage homes and churches or even derelict commercial buildings that could have represented a liability to the community are transformed, through the Reside program, into a community asset.

02. Social contractor

In addition to creating affordable housing, Reside projects provide real world, hands-on experience in the trades for people at risk of experiencing homelessness as they contribute to the renovation of these spaces through the training programs offered by our contracting partners. Our social enterprise contracting partners utilize a combination of training programs, connections to trade unions and employers as well as support resources customized for Reside trainees to ensure the cycle of poverty is truly broken for their participants.

03. Housing provider

We partner with local organizations who are already working on the front lines in their communities with families struggling to avoid homelessness. They know the most vulnerable people in their community by name.

Our housing provider partners help design Reside spaces to best meet the needs of these vulnerable people and then connect the people most in need of housing with the newly created units.

04. Move in

At the end of the process, the people who were homeless or were at risk of homelessness move into their new home!

The local housing providers help the tenants move in and get established in the home.

They also provide ongoing, wraparound supports to the tenants to ensure they not only survive, but thrive.

Reside Projects in Development

Watch the full virtual tour of our Downtown Toronto Reside project here!

Vacant commercial space above the Canada Post in downtown Orillia to be renovated into 24 units of affordable housing for women fleeing domestic violence, anticipated 70+ people to be trained and employed

Vacant commercial property in North End Winnipeg into homes for Indigenous women and their children, anticipated 35+ people trained and employed

"Uninhabitable" house in downtown Toronto into a safe home for a refugee family, anticipated 35+ people trained and employed

Completed Reside Homes

Vacant heritage church in Caledon, Ontario into a home for adults with developmental disabilities, 95 people trained, 80 now working full time in the trades

Vacant house in North York, Ontario into Homes for Black youth who were experiencing homelessness, 55 people trained, 47 now working full time in the trades

Kitchen

How you can help

1. Participate in a Community Build Day

Raising the Roof’s Community Build Days offer an a uniquely impactful team building opportunity. Your team will have the opportunity to deepen your team connection, gain practical skills, learn from people whose lives are being changed through the Reside program and create affordable housing for people at risk of homelessness!

Download our Community Build Day guide to learn more about this hands-on opportunity to have social impact in your community while strengthening your team.

Reside Community Build Days

pdf 5 MB

2. Sponsor a Reside project

We have levels of sponsorship available for small businesses who would like to be part of creating local solutions for homelessness in their community or large corporations who want to step up and work with us to end homelessness in Canada.

If you would like to find out more information about custom sponsorship packages to meet your organizations needs and goals, please contact us below.

Learn more

3. Help with a property

Do you know of a vacant building in your community that would be appropriate for housing? Ideal properties are vacant schools, office buildings, churches, halls and residential properties that are close to transit, shopping, schools and other essential amenities. If you know of a vacant property that fits that description in your community, please contact us and we can evaluate the property to see if it is a good fit for Reside.

Also, if you are the owner of the property and are willing to put your vacant property to use to change lives of people in your community, we are able to accept donations of real estate. With property donations, Raising the Roof assumes development costs and as a registered charity, we are able to issue charitable tax receipts for the value of the property upon independent appraisal. Please contact us to learn more.

Contact us

4. Donate

Either on a one time, monthly or quarterly basis, your investment will change lives of people who are sleeping rough on the streets, facing eviction and are scared, or temporarily staying in a shelter, grateful for the bed but longing for a permanent home.

Click to join us in being part of the solution.

Donate

What our partners

are saying

Sean Gadon, Director of Affordable Housing Office, City of Toronto

The City of Toronto is very pleased to participate in Raising the Roof’s Reside Program… We see the Reside Program as an important initiative in creating new community-based housing solutions for youth in Toronto. We are particularly excited that the Reside Program has the potential to be scaled up to provide housing opportunities for vulnerable youth in towns and cities from coast to coast to coast.

Daniel E, BuildingUp Participant

The project at Cedar Mains has been exciting to look forward to through some difficult times in my personal life… I am so thankful to have the opportunity to not only learn the trades but to make an impact. After meeting the young ladies that are moving into to the home we’re building, I can see the difference this project will make in their lives. It’s much more than just a house.

Janet, client of a Partner Agency

Everyone at the organization, everyone in the building… they just made me feel like they’re proud of me. I had no self esteem, I had no self-confidence, nothing. And they started working on giving it back to me. They say that I’m doing the work, but you have to have a reason to start doing the work – you need that team to be there.

Our National

homelessness

One home at a time