Joe first founded Trillium Housing alongside Richard Owen and Fred Heller a little over 10 years ago. All three founders are housing affordability experts, and together they brought decades of industry experience in real estate finance, non-profit housing development, government, construction management and social innovation. Joe, in particular, had spent a lot of time in the non-profit housing development sector, where he noted there was a “disconnect” with the traditional development sector. “I noticed that I was the only person attending meetings of both the developers’ association for the GTA and the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association,” he says. “I thought there had to be a way to bring the two sides together, and to incorporate some housing affordability into what regular commercial development sector was doing.” At the same time, Joe was also developing an interest in ‘impact investing.’ He saw there were some individuals, companies and foundations that wanted to make financial investments and get a return, but also see some social or environmental good come out of what they were doing. “So I started thinking about how I could build a platform that would bring in impact investors, that would deliver housing affordability, and that would do it within the process of conventional housing development,” he says. From that thinking, Trillium Housing was born. The way Trillium’s model works is, firstly, they raise money from JUNE 2023
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