St. Faith’s Anglican Church: Advancing a Community-Based Housing Vision into a Viable Development Pathway

St. Faith’s Anglican Church is a faith-based organization with an established presence in Edmonton. Its work is rooted in restorative community practice, including programming for unhoused, low-income, and vulnerable populations, with a strong emphasis on food security and community connection. Grounded in a commitment to reconciliation and community-building, the organization focuses on creating spaces where people can access support and build relationships. As its programs evolve, the organization is exploring how this model can be extended to include physical forms of care, with housing emerging as a natural next step in its work.

St. Faith’s sits on a site that already plays an active role in its community, including a well-used hall and kitchen facility connected to the worship space, as well as a parking lot along 93 Street just south of 118 Avenue. The current configuration supports existing programming, but limits the organization’s ability to expand that programming and extend its support beyond program-based services. St. Faith’s is now exploring how the site could enable both expanded programming and an expansion beyond program-based services into housing, including how reconfiguration of existing structures could create space for future development.

The project reflects that expansion. St. Faith’s is considering an intergenerational housing model that brings together Elders, including Kokums who remain connected to their families and communities, newcomer seniors who may be experiencing isolation, and vulnerable families facing trauma. The intent is to create a place of belonging for populations that are often disconnected or at risk of instability. The concept includes not only housing, but also integrated community and commercial space to support programming for residents and the surrounding neighbourhood. At this stage, the project is not yet defined at a technical level. Key elements such as building form, unit composition, operating model, and capital structure remain to be established. The work ahead is therefore less about advancing a fixed design and more about determining whether a viable and fundable project can be defined.

At this stage, the Housing Solutions Lab is supporting a defined set of early-stage pre-development activities. Funding is structured around three interdependent components: articulated design informed by land-use planning, an actionable operating model, and a financial plan for construction, financing, and ongoing operations. Together, these components move the project from a broad concept toward something that can be tested, evaluated, and advanced. This transition allows St. Faith’s to make informed decisions about how to proceed with the project, while providing a credible basis for engaging funders, partners, and its community.

For St. Faith’s, this raises a central question: whether structured pre-development support can move the project from a broad vision into a capital-ready development posture. In this case, the proposed housing model reflects a holistic perspective of the populations St. Faith’s currently serves through its programming. Whether a housing project can effectively accommodate the same range of needs that are currently addressed through program-based services is currently unknown. This will test how the assumption translates into design, operations, and financial structure, and where that complexity can be supported or where it requires refinement. It also provides an opportunity to observe how scope is defined and adjusted as the project moves toward feasibility.

Work will proceed in stages, beginning with articulated design informed by land-use planning. This initial phase is intended to establish a clear direction for how the project could take shape on the site, and will act as the foundation for the remaining work. As the design is defined, it begins to structure both the operating model and the financial plan, which depend on assumptions about unit mix, scale, and configuration. Progression through these stages is therefore less about completing tasks in sequence and more about how early design decisions inform and constrain what follows. The primary testing window runs from mid-April through the end of June, with additional time allocated for refinement and data collection.

By the end of this process, the objective is not to complete a finalized development, but to determine whether a viable project can be clearly defined, and whether the organization is positioned to advance it into the next stage of capital development.