When did houses stop being homes?
Somewhere along the way, we started talking about housing as an asset, an investment, a retirement strategy. What we do not talk about nearly enough is the simple and essential idea of home. Maybe it is this time of year that brings it into focus for me. As my family starts planning dinners and gatherings and all the small traditions that mark the season, I am reminded that a home is the backdrop for the stories we build together.
It is where life actually happens. Housing has always required a big decision and a major investment. That has not changed. But something else has. I cannot pinpoint when it happened, but I think most people sense the shift. Our relationship to housing feels different today. It used to be a home first and an asset second. Now it often feels like that order is reversed. When we talk about housing policy, the conversation becomes supply and demand. When we talk about building more homes, we focus on zoning, height limits and counting doors. We all know people will live in these homes, yet we rarely ask how these spaces will support a life or a family or a story.
I say this as someone who leads a housing not for profit and works with many partners to bring ten thousand homes to Waterloo Region through BUILD NOW. The numbers matter. We absolutely need more units built. But if all we create is ten thousand units with no sense of home, then we have missed the mark. I think about this often as a parent of three young boys. This time of year, my wife and I end up buried under a mountain of winter gear. Hats and boots and mitts and the inevitable missing mitt that disappears somewhere between school and home. It is the rhythm of the seasons. When it is not toboggans and skates it is bikes and skateboards. Families need space to make life work. That space is part of what turns a house into a home. It is space designed for living. When we build assets instead of homes, another parent is staring at that same pile of wet winter gear in a tiny living room trying to make the impossible work in a unit designed to meet zoning rules and density targets rather than the needs of their family. That space was not created for them. It was created to meet a quota.
This is why this moment feels so urgent. The federal government is preparing once again to take on the housing crisis and the province and our municipality are all trying to respond as well. Yet so much of what we hear sounds like we are building widgets rather than communities, safety, stability and the kind of housing that supports a full life. I want better for our community. I want solutions that offer people hope, not just a place to get by. I want us to build places where kids can grow, where families can gather, where neighbours can connect and where stories can take root. People need more than housing. They need a home.
-Philip Mills
Philip Mills, CEO Habitat Waterloo Region
