It’s been a banner 2026 for Ottawa Community Housing, but the city’s largest non-profit landlord said its recent wins are a result of a strategy that it began laying out years earlier.
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It’s been a banner 2026 for Ottawa Community Housing, but the city’s largest non-profit landlord said its recent wins are a result of a strategy that it began laying out years earlier.
“The affordability gap was increasing, so we recognized that the status quo was not okay. We needed to add more to the portfolio,” chief development officer Cliff Youdale told OBJ last week. “We really started this in earnest almost 10 years ago. So this isn't an overnight success. It's been a lot of work to get here.”
Over the last decade, Youdale said, the organization has put more emphasis into acquisitions and new development than it has before, and the last 12 months have been especially busy.
“The majority of the stock that we had (a decade ago) was in place for over 30 years, and there was a period where there wasn’t an addition,” said Youdale. “At the same time, the city was growing, doubling in size. Like any good property management firm, we needed to make sure that we added units to the portfolio, and we took care of the properties that made sense within our portfolio, and we looked for opportunities to expand.”
In September, the organization acquired 503 rental homes from Minto, a deal that included 73 townhouse blocks and two apartment buildings. OCH called it a landmark deal that protected a substantial portion of the city’s long-term affordable housing supply.
OCH, which owns and manages more than 15,500 housing units, has been busy on the development front. The organization has 1,000 new homes under construction, with work set to begin soon on 1,100 more.
Those projects include Gladstone Village and phase two of Mosaiq Ottawa, both in Little Italy, as well as the Shearwater Court Expansion, and collaborative projects such as the 1770 Heatherington subdivision.
Most recently, OCH broke ground in August on a new project at 200 Beausoleil Dr. in Lowertown. The 20-storey affordable housing tower features 159 new units, including 32 accessible units.
The recent volume of activity, Youdale said, has allowed the organization to address increasing demand.
“Obviously demand is almost insatiable in terms of affordability in Ottawa, so we’re trying to be as aggressive as we can be where those opportunities arise,” he said.
He said more opportunities have recently cropped up, especially for non-profit housing organizations.
“If we go back 10 years, acquisition was pretty challenging,” he said. “It was a very hot market at the time, and REITs and other organizations were very, very active in the acquisition market. Because it was so competitive, the pricing was not preferential, so it was really difficult for us to make acquisitions.”
Now, he said non-profits are seeing more opportunities, especially those that aren’t as attractive to private property managers.
“We are acquiring large family units in those acquisitions, which are very difficult for us to build, just in terms of the economics,” said Youdale. “What may make these things not attractive to the private sector are things that make them attractive to us. Protecting lower rent structures is something that we like to do. In the private sector, that’s not what their core mandate is, so that’s why these opportunities for acquisition are creeping up. They don’t necessarily make as much (sense) in the private sector, but they’re absolutely well-suited for us.”
He added that OCH typically works on a longer-term cycle than corporate property owners.
“We’re in it for the long haul,” said Youdale. “We’re not looking for any type of short-term gain. Our measurement of success is measured in the long term rather than the short term. So that opens up a lot of patient capital that we can deploy.”
He added, “In a soft market, we’re bringing a lot of money into the economy. In the private sector, they have to time the market. They have to hit those windows. They can’t start projects in a soft market. We can continue to build because we’re not trying to time the market.”
OCH isn’t the only organization seeing the fruits of its long-term efforts this year.
The Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation (CCOC), another local non-profit housing developer, has advanced three major development projects this year.
In Little Italy, the organization is looking to build up to 128 new affordable units in a 12-storey mid-rise apartment building at Loretta Avenue and Hickory Street. On Bank Street in the Glebe, it’s proposing 100 affordable units in a nine-storey mixed-income development on a former parking lot.
The organization has also finalized plans to rebuild a 32-unit complex at 240 Presland Rd. that was destroyed by a fire in 2023. The new building will have 64 units, including 10 fully accessible suites and a shared rooftop space.
CCOC executive director Sarah Button said the organization has also been thinking long-term to increase its capacity to build.
“It’s the result of years of planning,” Button told OBJ. “We’ve been thinking we want to be able to grow. We’ve done the work to set our strategic plan and our goals and now we’re starting to see those things. We’ve planted the seeds, and they’re starting to sprout.”
According to Button, the non-profit housing sector faces regular ups and downs that are different from those experienced in the private sector.
She said the organization was adding 100 new units a year in the 1980s and ’90s. But in more recent decades, activity slowed.
Now, she said, activity is on the rise again.
“Disinvestment slowed us down, but now we’re seeing investment again,” Button explained. “I also think some of it is opportunistic. Our existing portfolio is reaching the point where we’ve got redevelopment opportunities in our own portfolio. We are at a scale and size where we’re able to do that and take advantage of new opportunities that come along at the same time, like the parking lot at Bank and Chamberlain. That was an opportunity that we were able to jump on.”
She added that the organization has also benefited from the push at the municipal and federal level to build more homes, and to add more affordable housing to the market.
Last December, the city announced a partnership with Build Canada Homes to invest $400 million to create 3,000 new non-market and affordable homes in Ottawa. The federal government also introduced the Housing Accelerator Fund, a $4.4-billion program with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to fast-track housing construction and cut municipal red tape across Canada.
In Ottawa, the city’s Housing Acceleration Plan introduced a number of measures aimed at speeding up the development process, including cutting and reducing technical study requirements and streamlining the rezoning application process to encourage higher-density projects.
Button said these efforts have been beneficial for non-profit developers as well as private companies.
“The momentum from the city and the Build Canada Homes deal has certainly put some wind in our sails, even though we’re still waiting for some of the specifics around that,” she said. “We’ve certainly seen the City of Ottawa come through on things like land, accelerating planning approvals for non-market housing, and doing what they can to meet the speed and agility that other levels of government are requiring.”
She added that she expects that push to continue.
“What we keep hearing from every level of government is, ‘All hands on deck, everybody in. We’ve got to work in partnership. We’ve got to scale non-profit housing,’” she said. “And that’s what we’re doing. We have those three projects, totaling about 290 new homes in three neighbourhoods, and that’s amazing.”
