“Once the first house was up and running, I felt led to invest in a second place.”

Jenny Burr
Spur Ottawa Correspondent

After 35 years in real estate, Theresa Quann Bakker knows all the tricks to helping people find the right house to call home. But a few years ago, she found an area with serious challenges. The discovery set her on a personal quest to open up new doors.

“My daughter, Martha Lavictoire, used to work at Matthew House as the program director of The Furniture Bank,” Bakker shares. “She would often talk about the need for clean, safe, affordable housing. I had a rental townhouse that was going to become vacant and I thought, ‘God is working here at Matthew House. There are people who need homes, so this may be a God opportunity.’”

Matthew House provides temporary housing for refugee claimants, while they work through the application process. Through The Furniture Bank, they provide the needed furnishings, once claimants find long-term housing.

“When The Furniture Bank first opened its doors we had just a handful of volunteers,” Lavictoire explains. “Over the course of a few months a community of over 40 volunteers, mostly refugees, came weekly to work hard and share fellowship. Part of my job was to find people willing to volunteer and I asked my mom if she was interested in helping out.”

After touring Matthew House and meeting some of the residents, Bakker wanted to use her talent as a realtor to help out. So she made the rental unit she had available to refugees leaving Matthew House.

“Once the first house was up and running, I felt led to invest in a second place,” Bakker says, adding that she has always felt compassion for those who society often overlooks.

That was seven years ago. Today, Matthew House, Catholic Immigration, and other organizations send residents to Bakker. The residents commit to responsibilities within the house and live there as long as they need. Each residence is fully furnished through private donors and The Furniture Bank.

Recently, Bakker partnered with a youth shelter called Restoring Hope. They took one unit from the second rental property for a pilot project offering transitional housing to shelter clients.

“This is a very big step forward, helping these kids go beyond emergency shelters to something more permanent,” says Jason Pino, Founder of Restoring Hope.

Many Canadian cities currently struggle to provide affordable housing for those in need. With property values rocketing up in many areas, the problem will likely continue for some time.

“Last year, the average stay of our residents was 3.2 months,” says Matthew House executive director Miriam Rawson. “This year we are expecting that time to increase as affordable housing becomes tight, with the influx of Syrian families.”

Bakker hopes to develop a team to help her run the two residences. She is also encouraging believers to step out, sharing God’s radical love with those around them.

She says just “look at where you see God already at work and join Him there.”