Jeffrey Neven, MSW, RSW on LinkedIn: Indwell's affordable housing project is moving forward in the Clarkson… (2024)

Indwell's latest affordable housing project is about to open in the Streetsville Neighbourhood of Mississauga. This enhanced support building will soon welcome 40 people into their new homes.Special thanks to all the construction workers who have built this beautiful building that integrates two heritage buildings with new apartments. Also thanks to the volunteers who make these apartments into homes!

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Grateful for the support!

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Social impact financing is a way for all of us to directly invest in what we care about!

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Cycling has a way of slowing down the world. Celtic Saints talked about "thin spaces", places where the divine feels close. Cycling and paddling have always been that for me. Today, mid-way through our ride, we bumped into Bill who is paddling his canoe to Newfoundland. He started 3 months ago in Memphis Tennessee. He's on a life journey to follow the fur trading routes of North America. Last year he did the French River to the St Lawrence.On our ride today, my wife Maria and I talked about people doing pilgrimage hikes like the El Camino, and we wondered what they are seeking.Perhaps we are all seeking those moments of solitude, reflection and connection to the Creator. Whatever it is that drives us, cycling and paddling have always brought me to new spaces and introduced me to the most interesting places and people.Where are your "thin spaces"?

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Thank-you Laura Babco*ck Babco*ck for your service and telling our community's story. It's easy to ignore something we don't see or know about. But now that we know it's cruel to be indifferent. We also can't normalize hunger and encampments. People need help now (short-term solutions) and we need a permanent solution to hunger and homelessness.

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I'm excited about partnering with City Housing Hamilton and the City of Hamilton on this new supportive housing venture.

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Some good news for your day! Toyota supports supportive housing solution in Cambridge with $125,000 donation! We have lots of money yet to raise but soon we will incorporate this heritage building into new supportive housing! Thanks Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada for being a leader in finding solutions to end homelessness in Cambridge! #cambridge #endinghomelessness #affordablehousing

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"You have to CARE," yelled my neighbour at a group of passing teens wondering out loud if the man they just walked by was passed-out or deceased. The parks in my central/east Hamilton neighbourhood have become home to over 150 people. The photo is the encampment on my street and has now been there for over a year. Across the street at Gage Park, Hamilton's most iconic park, host of music festivals, flower shows, public tropical greenhouses, children's museum, sport's fields, rose gardens, historic fountains, and more, has become home to over 20 tents including Terry's tent that sits in a former daffodil garden beside the entry walkway to the tropical green house. Terry's weathered body show the harm of winter. Violence is rising as citizens literally battle over the park. https://lnkd.in/gdQYeVsdIn response, a local school cancelled their "Year-end Picnic in the Park" citing safety concerns for children to visit their local park. If this is our new reality, parks being used for permanent shelter, we need to have a conversation about basic utilities and services. People on our street are discussing building and installing traditional outhouses in our parks and along the Niagara Escarpment to provide privacy and a hygienic response to the growing need for sanitation. It isn't okay for our tented neighbours to have no access to bathrooms in the evening and as a consequence have our parks filling up with human excrement. Others have asked about installing new water taps at encampments to provide for needed hydration and washing, basic survival and public health stuff. On Sunday, our church had a picnic at Montgomery Park and we watched as our children played in the splash pad alongside our unsheltered neighbours who "showered" in the same space. I guess this is our new normal...our kids ironically are now used to it? Are we okay with children's splash pads being the only option for showering? Should we consider installing outdoor showers? We watched and offered food from the picnic.The mounds of garbage continue to grow and there is no garbage collection for our tented neighbours. Nearly daily, there are fires in encampments in our city. Sometimes the air fills with the smell of the plastic burning from the wire "collected" overnight. Terry (the guy who lives in the daffodil garden) talks about teenagers shooting his tent with fireworks, hollering, "we are going to burn your tent down." If "we" are going to embrace tents in parks as the solution to homelessness, we need to provide basic services as well. Of course the alternative is to get building those supportive housing units that the Hamilton is Home Alliance has shovel ready and permanently remove the label of "Homeless" from my tented neighbours. But do we Care?

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I attended the Steelport by Slate Asset Management open house this week. 800 acres of industrial waterfront that is being reimagined. I've visited similar reimagined spaces in Pittsburgh, Montreal, Chicago, Toronto, Buffalo and others but haven't seen anything to this scale. While I normally post about housing, this is about City Building!What I liked:- revitalizing underutilized serviced industrial land will bring in new businesses and hundreds (thousands?) of jobs.- making use of existing seaport, highway and rail access- public access to the waterfront- mix of large and small industry and commercial - recognizing value of green spaces - reimagined and utilizing pipe system as a green and pedestrian/cycling/traffic corridors- intention to save the Battery as a historical destination place- we can get up close to our industrial history, a mystery for most Hamiltonians- intention to include micro businesses- Hamilton needs a destination place- some environmental remediation My caution:- the scale is enormous and will require huge social infrastructure and placemaking to animate these new spaces.- without any people living here, will it be able sustain the small businesses or will it become an 8 times a year event space like the stadium, with minimal economic spin-off to local businesses.- I'm thinking of Buffalo River works (if you haven't been, you should go, but on the day I visited it was completely void of people. I'm sure it fills during specific summer events or events at the KeyBank Center (do the Sabres play in the summer?)- will the private owners be paying for all this public space or will the city be asked to pay for it?- what is the plan to build the small businesses and placemakers to animate this enormous space- and then, I heard lots of, "Well we know how this works...they start by selling you on beauty, greenspace, public access, event space, historical preservation and in the end we will just get industry"- if contamination prohibit residential, it would still be great to get some hotels in there. Maybe even yurts for rent like Parks Canada did in downtown Montreal along the old canal.Overall, I think this project is the most significant project happening in Hamilton, yes, even bigger then the continuously delayed Light Rail Transit and the downtown Entertainment District. If done right, it will have a transformational effect on not only the central/east end but on all Hamilton.We as neighbours need to get involved early. We need to build the capacity needed to animate the space with business, arts, social enterprises, marinas, bike parks, sports, restaurants, amphitheatre, farmer market, boat tours, ziplines, breweries, and more and ensure that it really is a beautiful mix of industry and public space.I have noticed increasing number of cruise ships going through the Great Lakes. Let's make this a cruise ship destination. (Think Halifax harbour area).Let's get behind this and make it successful!

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