We Are Making Our Home Applications More Accessible

Update March 27*** CTV shared a news story focusing on the need for more transit and affordable housing for immigrants. Here's a portion of that article.

OTTAWA — The federal emphasis on integrating immigrants through language training and recognition of foreign credentials is far too narrow, says a new paper.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is proposing a new strategy for integration that would broaden the focus to include affordable housing and public transit.

"Federal and provincial settlement programs have not caught up with changing immigrant settlement patterns, including a growing shift to suburban communities," the report says.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is in the midst of public consultations on how to best reshape the intake of immigrants, so that the country attracts the kind of people it needs to sustain its workforce. more...
_____________________________________________________________
Recently, we paired with Immigrant Services - Guelph Wellington (IS-GW) to provide information on our affordable home building program to new Canadians and clients of IS-GW. We participated in two IS-GW workshops (Homeownership & Coffee Talk - Immigrant Women's Group) to help disseminate information about our programs. This initiative is funded by a grant received by Habitat Canada as part of the Habitat for Humanity 360 Built Smart Partnership. With this grant, we will look to expand our family outreach to be more accessible to those new to Canada.

The 360 Built Smart Partnership is focused on developing initiatives that eliminates the housing crisis in Canada. This funding will help increase applications from new Canadian families as well as have documents translated by the Translation and Interpretation Program Services (TIPS) into Chinese, Hindi, Vietnamese, Punjabi, and Spanish, the five most common immigrant languages in Guelph and Wellington County. Finally, other funding will be allocated to hiring interpreters to help support new Canadian applicant families.
I caught up to Diane (our Executive Director) to get her thoughts on these workshops

“Affordable housing and language barriers are first concerns for many of these families that immigrate to Canada. To make information available to these families on the housing programs in their native language is the optimal way of opening the door to affordable home ownership”.

*Here are some facts:

According to the Canadian Council on Social Development in 1995, on average 30% of immigrant populations living in cities lived below the poverty line. ISGW has been providing assistance programs since 1978 to “serve new Canadians and build community by providing responsive and diverse settlement services and programs.” Hosting an information workshop on affordable housing is important because those spending more than 30% of their income on housing are considered "at risk". These workshops will help to reduce the challenges newcomers to Canada face as they seek to attain and retain decent affordable housing. Ultimately, the social impact will have these families transition from merely surviving to that of thriving; they will reduce their reliance on social services and healthcare.

Habitat for Humanity Wellington County encourages all of those interested in gaining insight and knowledge into our Habitat for Humanity home building program to pick up information located at our office at 104 Dawson Rd. (Corner of Speedvale & Dawson) or at Immigrant Services (926 Paisley Rd. Unit 4 & 5).

We'd like to thank the Title Sponsors of the Habitat for Humanity Canada 360 Built Smart Partnership for their continued support.