Hope for the Season
There is something about the holiday season.
As the song goes, “it’s the most wonderful time of the year.” I was recently watching one of what I’m sure will be many Christmas movies with my boys, and they all follow the same familiar rhythm. Good people trying their best to make Christmas happen, moments where it all feels like it might fall apart, and then, just when things are darkest, something breaks through and saves the day.
Every movie calls it something different. Christmas magic. A belief in Santa. The spirit of the season.
But it seems obvious to me what really fixes every Christmas story.
Hope.
You have to believe. You have to trust. You have to hope.
Hope is one of those words that feels inseparable from Christmas. And yet, right now, it can feel like even the power of the holiday season can’t bring hope to housing.
People ask me about housing all the time. And no matter where the conversation starts, it often lands in the same place: hopelessness. From every side of the housing conversation, there are reasons to worry.
Construction starts are down, which means that just when we need housing the most, we are building less. Talk to anyone whose mortgage is coming up for renewal, or someone trying to find a place to rent for the first time, and you hear it everywhere. Parents are worried about where their children will live. Seniors on fixed incomes are stretching every dollar. Young adults have quietly given up on the idea that they might one day own a home of their own.
And that’s before we even talk about homelessness.
It’s easy to feel hopeless in the face of a crisis this big.
But this holiday season, we need to bring hope back into the housing conversation. We can’t settle for the status quo. We can’t allow another generation to lose faith that safe, stable housing is possible.
Because there is reason for hope.
Right here in our community, we are seeing it take shape. Habitat for Humanity Waterloo Region, BUILD NOW, the City of Waterloo, and the City of Kitchener are working together to do something different. By using municipal land in new ways, these partners have chosen action over inaction, and possibility over paralysis.
Together, we are building housing that families can afford again. Because affordability isn’t a myth. It is a choice. And the impact of this kind of partnership doesn’t stop at the front door. Like any good deed, it creates momentum.
When people spend less on housing, they have more to spend in their community. More trips to the local bakery. More support for neighbourhood businesses and artisans. More stability for trades and construction workers, which in turn fuels opportunity for entrepreneurs and small businesses as communities grow.
It means people can stay rooted where they belong. That the connections they’ve built and the lives they’ve shaped don’t have to be torn apart. It means the dream of homeownership comes back into reach for those who had stopped believing it was meant for them.
In so many ways, our lives begin with home. With something stable, safe and secure, everything else becomes possible.
So if we are going to restore hope, especially during this season, it makes sense to start where life begins.
We start with home.
-Philip Mills
Philip Mills, CEO Habitat Waterloo Region
