Options Housing Receives LiveWorkPlay Community Partner Award 2025

Options Housing receives LiveWorkPlay Community Partner Award 2025

Julie Kingstone, Co-Leader, LiveWorkPlay:

Thank you for the warm welcome, I am here tonight to present two community partner awards. LiveWorkPlay helps the community welcome and include people with intellectual disabilities, autistic persons and individuals with a dual diagnosis to live, work, and play as valued citizens. We all know to participate as citizens in our community the first thing we need is a place to call home. Tonight, we want to recognize two community partners who have been integral in supporting LiveWorkPlay and individuals with intellectual disabilities to have a safe, secure, and affordable home. 

The first housing partner we want to recognize tonight has supported two individuals who found themselves in urgent need of a home. Facing emergency shelter and the real possibility of being unhoused, we reached out to Options Bytown, now known as Options Housing. 

Options Housing provides permanent and deeply affordable housing to 128 tenants in four residential communities in Ottawa. They also offer Resource Centres that support over 1000 Ottawa Community Housing tenants with crisis intervention, counselling, and community development. They have a Hoarding Assistance Team and Safer Supply to provide direct housing support to 200+ people accessing treatment for substance use disorders. 

Thankfully, the stars aligned, and Options Housing was able to welcome these 2 individuals supported by LiveWorkPlay into two of their communities. 

As the Options Housing website says: we are committed to ending homelessness in Ottawa. We believe that everyone deserves a safe and stable place to call home, no matter their background, no matter their challenges. We want to see real and lasting change in our community, and we know that the best way to end homelessness is to prevent it from happening in the first place. These beliefs underpin everything we do.  

And this is exactly what we experienced.

Options Housing is having a very busy week doing all that they do, so they were not able to accept the award tonight, but we present it to them in person in the near future, and of course, they will see the recording from tonight, so please join me in congratulating Options Housing!