Not everyone who calls Hamilton home can afford an actual home in Hamilton. More than 6,200
households were on the City’s social housing waitlist in 2023, the most recent year for which
official data are available. And at least 1,200 people were experiencing homelessness during
the last official count in November 2024. These figures are widely deemed underestimates.
As a widespread housing crisis has taken root, a leading local voice has emerged to find – and
implement – solutions. The Hamilton is Home coalition brings together all the major nonprofit
housing providers operating in the city in a powerful collaboration for change.
From competition to coalition
The Hamilton is Home coalition was officially formed in March of 2020, following years of
sharply rising housing costs and an increasing awareness by nonprofit housing providers of
systemic issues impacting their ability to respond to the growing crisis. It was simply too hard to
build homes fast enough to meet the local need. Furthermore, no one organization had the
breadth of expertise and resources required to do it.
As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold and the precarity of housing for so many became a more
visible public issue, it was clear change was needed. Systemic challenges needed to be
addressed, and a more ambitious vision was required to meet the moment. Collaboration –
among nonprofit housing providers, and between those organizations and government – would
be essential.
“Things changed so quickly between 2018 and 2021, the challenges with housing just
ballooned,” said Daniela Giulietti, Director of Public Affairs for YWCA Hamilton, a founding
member of the Hamilton is Home coalition. “There was a collective realization that none of us
were going to be able to solve this on our own.”
Nonprofit housing providers were accustomed to seeing each other as competitors for scarce
funding opportunities, despite their shared values. But funding was increasing – the federal
government in 2017 released a National Housing Strategy that included larger funding
opportunities than ever before for affordable housing development across the country. The
strategy prioritized larger projects that could create significant impact in addressing local
housing needs. There was both an increasingly pressing need for housing and, potentially,
increasing opportunity for affordable housing providers to gain support from the federal
government.
When the founding coalition members met in March 2020, Giulietti said, “We had never really all
sat down to talk about how to solve homelessness in our lifetime, how to make big requests for
big government investments, and how to strengthen the argument to the federal government
that Hamilton is the place to do that.” Once the coalition formed, Giulietti said its purpose and
usefulness came to seem obvious. “I remember some of us thinking, ‘Wait a minute. Of course
we want to collaborate! We should be collaborating more. We could be winning bigger for our
city. We could be developing solutions faster if we’re learning from each other.’”
The coalition now includes the city’s eight largest nonprofit housing providers: CityHousing
Hamilton, Good Shepherd, Indwell, Habitat for Humanity, Hamilton East Kiwanis Non-Profit
Homes, Sacajawea Non-Profit Housing, Victoria Park Community Homes and YWCA Hamilton.
The coalition “has created this beautiful synergy, solidarity between us,” Giulietti said.
Partnering with the City of Hamilton
In order to bring federal funding for affordable housing to Hamilton, the city’s nonprofit housing
sector would have to coordinate better among themselves, and with the City of Hamilton, which
was also increasingly prioritizing affordable housing issues.
City government efforts are essential in two ways: in streamlining regulatory and administrative
processes involved in building affordable housing, and in making early investments in projects
to help nonprofit developers strengthen their applications for federal funds.
The Hamilton is Home coalition found a champion in the then-Member of Parliament for
Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas and Minister of Labour Filomena Tassi. Tassi held a
roundtable on housing issues the same month the coalition formed, centred on the question of
what it would take to “move the needle,” or make a significant impact, on housing: one that
would show up in measures like the City’s social housing waitlist, the homeless population and
overall affordability. The Hamilton is Home coalition settled on an ambitious goal of building
3,000 units to halve the City’s housing waitlist.
Tassi became a champion of the Hamilton is Home coalition and helped to facilitate what
became a strong working relationship with City of Hamilton government, said Graham Cubitt,
coalition Chair and the Director of Projects and Development at the supportive housing
developer Indwell.
Since then, the City of Hamilton has built the policy and investment infrastructure needed to
more efficiently and effectively support nonprofit housing developers and the creation of more
affordable housing in the city, with essential guidance and input from the Hamilton is Home
coalition members. This has included City Council’s adoption of the Housing Sustainability and
Investment Roadmap in April 2023, and the creation of the City’s Housing Secretariat Division.
(Read more on Hamilton is Home’s work with the City of Hamilton here).
A brighter housing landscape in Hamilton
Since the coalition’s inception, all of the member organizations of Hamilton is Home have
received City and federal support for new affordable housing projects.
In 2025, that included nine projects approved by the City of Hamilton representing over 800 new
housing units, Cubitt said. More than 540 new units began construction in 2025, with 200
expected to start construction in 2026.
“We are working right now on a portfolio of projects. One is 1,200 units – that’s a cooperation
amongst us all,” Cubitt said. “Our member organizations are working on about another 600 units
as individual projects. So there’s about 1,800 units that we hope to move to construction in
2026.”
The 1,200-unit project represents the first collaboration for the Hamilton is Home coalition on a
single development project. And already, another ambitious collaborative housing project is also
in the works. “We have a proposal into the City for 2,200 units on municipal land, maybe for
approval in 2026,” Cubitt said.
“By pooling impact, we can hopefully attract increased federal investment,” Cubitt said. “There is
such a need for this kind of transformative change, and the Hamilton is Home coalition is poised
to achieve it with federal support.”