Media Release: National Housing Day 2025
November 21, 2025 – National Housing Day is held annually on November 22 to recognize the important work done by partners across Canada to improve access to housing.
This National Housing Day, The District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board (TBDSSAB) is reflecting on the community partnerships that have strengthened our local service system.
Housing and homelessness prevention service systems are designed to ensure adequate services are available across the CMHC Housing Continuum. Simplified into seven stages, the continuum shows the progression from living unhoused to achieving market housing. Service system managers are tasked with maintaining a housing system that can offer appropriate housing options along that continuum.
Service system management requires planning long-term without losing sight of what people need in the present. TBDSSAB works with community partners to ensure programs and services are available when and where people need them. This includes capital investments to get new housing units added to our service system, as well as operating funding to ensure short-term needs are addressed.
The housing continuum spans includes multiple sectors and levels of government. Intersectoral partnerships help us ensure continuity across the system.
TBDSSAB’s Housing and Homelessness programs have been fortunate enough to work with an increasingly diverse range of community organizations this year. Everything our partners make possible—be it engagement with tenants, providing emergency shelter, or building affordable housing units—helps make our service system stronger and has positive outcomes for the people we serve.
Partnership highlights from 2025:
- The Magnus Theatre in Education program partnered with TBDSSAB for its 2025 Collective Creation Project on the theme of poverty. This was a unique opportunity to spread awareness of programs and services while reducing stigma around the experience of being low-income. Thank you to the Magnus TIE program for instilling compassion and understanding in your programming.
- Thunder Bay Art Gallery partnered with TBDSSAB to offer accessible social arts programming opportunities to our senior tenants. We appreciate the Art Gallery for considering how this program would benefit our senior tenants.
- This October, we announced a new partnership with TBPS to introduce a new Housing Safety Unit (HSU) with Special Constables at TBDSSAB-owned housing properties. This partnership will support the wellbeing of our tenants while giving TBPS the access they need to more appropriately intervene in matters where landlords cannot.
- The new Homelessness Service System Data Tool (HSSDT) was developed through consultations with community partners in the emergency shelter system. Launched in fall 2025, the HSSDT will help improve client experiences and data integrity across the service system.
- Through HPP, TBDSSAB provided capital funding to multiple community partners to build 237 transitional and supportive housing units since 2023. Of this total, 164 are open and operational in 2025, 27 will open by January 2026, and 46 will open by summer 2026. Thank you to the community partners who stepped up to create housing options that meet people where they are.
In the spirit of National Housing Day, we extend our appreciation and admiration to the TBDSSAB staff and community partners—both within and outside of the housing sector—who support access to appropriate housing and dignity for tenants wherever they happen to be along the housing continuum. Thank you for helping us work toward a service system where there are fewer gaps for people to slip through.
For more information about TBDSSAB’s Community Housing and Homelessness Prevention programs, please see the attached 2025 TBDSSAB Housing Homelessness Impact Highlights
- “Though nothing is ever perfect, National Housing Day reminds us how far we’ve come and the people who make it possible. It truly takes a village to run a service system. I am proud of the TBDSSAB team for all that they do to support access to appropriate housing. Thank you to the team and all the community partners involved in our housing system.”
– Ken Ranta, CEO, TBDSSAB