Siloam Mission housing strategy targets seniors, vulnerable populations

Siloam Mission has released details of a new strategy to bolster Winnipeg’s stock of affordable housing, issuing a plea for community stakeholders to step forward and donate property or funding.

The Winnipeg non-profit has set a target of creating between 700 and 1,000 new housing units over the next decade. It hopes to meet the goal by forming and leveraging community partnerships, including a potential commitment from the owners of the Winnipeg Jets.

“I strongly believe that we should love our neighbours and that housing is how we do that,” Siloam Mission CEO Tessa Blaikie Whitecloud said by phone Sunday.

“When we talk about housing first, you need to have the housing first — literally — which we don’t in Winnipeg.”

Siloam, which operates a homeless shelter in downtown Winnipeg and supportive housing facilities elsewhere in the city, outlined the strategy in a 19-page document announced at the Fight for Charity fundraiser at RBC Convention Centre Saturday night.

Blaikie Whitecloud took to the ring during the sixth annual corporate boxing event, which sees amateur boxers compete against one another to raise funds for charitable organizations.

The event organizers chose Siloam Mission as this year’s beneficiary with a goal of raising $50,000, Blaikie Whitecloud said.

She hopes the funds will help implement the strategy, which has identified five high-priority housing demographics: seniors, people seeking sober housing, people at risk of becoming homeless and in need of emergency housing, youth aging out of care, and households led by women.

While the organization has not yet cemented donations from any community stakeholders, it is in conversations with several non-profits and businesses who may provide funding or property — including True North Sports and Entertainment, Blaikie Whitecloud said.

TNSE chief executive officer Mark Chipman endorsed the housing strategy in a promotional video produced by Siloam and shown during Saturday’s event.

“When you look at their plan, it just makes a lot of sense; it’s well thought out. It gives me personally, and our group, a lot of confidence to be able to work alongside Tessa,” Chipman said in the roughly four-minute video.

“This is a crisis that is not going to go away unless we collectively agree to embrace it. The only way you can really affect any meaningful change is collaborating with people that have a more informed and a similar passion that you have.”

Winnipeg has only three social housing units for every 20 low-income residents, placing the city well behind others in the Prairie region, Blaikie Whitecloud said.

All of the housing units Siloam hopes to build will operate with a rent-geared-to-income approach.

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“When we talk about social housing, that’s the type of housing that we are lacking,” Blaikie Whitecloud said. “There’s going to be a lot of variety both in the location of the housing and in the type of housing that gets developed.”

Siloam currently operates 137 social housing units throughout the city, including 32 units within the Odd Fellows Home at 4025 Roblin Blvd.

Siloam took over the property in February after the Assiniboine Links — a senior’s assisted living facility that formerly operated in the building — announced last year it would be closing.

The acquisition represents Siloam’s first step toward its social housing target, Blaikie Whitecloud said.

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca

Tyler Searle
Reporter

Tyler Searle is a multimedia producer who writes for the Free Press' city desk. Since joining the paper in 2022, he has found himself driving through blizzards, documenting protests and scouring the undersides of bridges for potential stories.

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