Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here to speak about this very important study.
My name is Michael Braithwaite, I am the CEO of Blue Door. Blue Door is an organization in York Region. The population of York Region is about 1.1 million people, and on any given night, about 1,500 people are experiencing homelessness.
Blue Door has been around for about 40 years, and for the first 35 years we were focused on reacting, in a sense, just with emergency housing or shelter. We are the largest emergency housing provider for men, families and youth in York Region.
Over the last five years, we've pivoted a little bit to not only providing emergency housing but of course also looking at short-term and long-term affordable housing with wraparound supports. We have a housing-first approach with rent geared to income, along with those wraparound supports.
We've created a lot of housing through innovative thinking, and as everyone here is aware, it's a tough time. We're in a bit of a housing crisis, especially for our most vulnerable. We've done that through innovative thinking and leveraging private donor funds to create sustainable, affordable rental housing for seniors, families and 2SLGBTQ+ youth.
We've repurposed vacant and broken down housing with Parks Canada. They have 44 vacant homes in Rouge National Urban Park. We took one of those homes. We used our construction social enterprise to rebuild it, and it is now a duplex that will have truly affordable rents for the next 30 years, so it has a purpose as well.
Blue Door has used funds from Reaching Home and private foundations to purchase a fourplex—