After years building big houses in the big city, Tim and Rhonda Kent decided to take their experience and turn their focus to helping people who truly needed it.
It’s been over a decade since the couple, along with a core group of individuals, created Redwood Park Communities, which helps build safe and affordable housing for individuals and families in Barrie.
“I was in the construction industry in Toronto and was a senior project manager for a large company down there," Tim Kent tells BarrieToday. "We were helping house lots of people who had money, (but) on the flip side, Rhonda and I were personally assisting women that were using shelters here in Barrie to move into their new housing that they’d go into after leaving the shelter.”
He said it became evident very quickly that there were simply no good options for people on the verge of homelessness or fleeing bad situations with very little of their belongings.
“They were moving into places that were way more expensive than they should’ve been for what they were getting. They weren’t happy, hopeful places at all,” Kent says.
Because of that, they were seeing a lot of women returning to their abusive partners.
“Going home, at least they could make sure their kids had meals and proper shelter and in some cases safer shelter, which is horrible to say considering what they were leaving. It wasn’t good," Kent adds.
The couple decided something more needed to be done.
“We felt like we could use some of the strengths we had around building housing for a very specific purpose, and that would be to create safe and affordable housing for individuals that were vulnerable (and) because of our relationship with the work we’d been doing with the women’s shelter, we thought that would be a good place to start.”
First up
Their first project was taking an abandoned and derelict old house that had been used for many years as a known crack house. With the help of a team of volunteers, they gutted the entire building and turned it from a dangerous eyesore to a place that would provide five safe, beautiful spaces for local families.
“We thought it was a good start being able to help five families. We had no idea how important those units would be,” Kent says.
Those five units have since helped approximately 175 women and their children in the last five or six years to get a fresh start.
“We had no idea when we were doing it that would be the case," he says, adding "we really just thought we were going to help five families.”
With the success of the first project, Kent says they quickly realized the community needed “way more” housing options, and that’s when Redwood Park Communities was officially born.
Redwood was created as a not-for-profit and applied for a charitable license.
“Then we really just went to work trying to figure out how we could build as much safe, affordable housing as we could, with the support of the community, and really support the families that are living there to meet their needs,” Kent says, adding often times those needs are quite deep and can include severe mental health or addiction issues. "Sometimes, it’s as simple as letting someone know they’re not alone.
“We are not counsellors. There are a lot of organizations in the community already that do fantastic work around case management and mental health (or) addiction support," he says. "We don’t do all of that. Everything we do we partner with other agencies to wrap the families we work with in the services they need to be able to heal and move forward.”
Redwood’s supportive community provides a lot of the side-by-side support — whether it’s as simple as having coffee with someone and talking through issues, providing a ride to the grocery store or the food bank or even just sitting with them when they go to a medical or legal appointment. It’s that day-to-day practical support that Redwood’s community team provides and can make a world of difference in someone’s life, he adds.
Wanting to do more
With so much already on the organization's agenda, Kent says they still want to do more, and are always having conversations with other local organizations to find out what their housing needs are and determine how they could help support the families and individuals they work with.
One example is the partnership the organization has built with the David Busby Centre. With support from the City of Barrie, the province and the County of Simcoe, they were able to convert an old motel into 18 affordable housing units for those who’ve been chronically homeless.
“It’s been a real privilege to be a part of that,” he says.
Another partnership with the Salvation Army Bayside Mission is to build a two-storey, 12-unit short-term supportive housing centre for families in crisis. Kent alluded to a few other projects that are in the mix, but was not able to give details just yet.
Kent is hoping the work the organization has been doing over the last 10-plus years will help inspire others in the community to look at various ways they can help address the city’s housing crisis.
“We started doing second suites to encourage the general public to be part of the housing solution by freeing up space in their basement, attics or by building a garden suite to create additional, affordable housing for those that need it,” he says. “If people have pieces of land or properties they can utilize to create additional affordable housing… that’s our specialty so we’d like to talk to you and we can sit down and work through what that can look like.”
Focus on the future
Kent says he's proud of what they’ve accomplished, but is even more excited for what the future holds for Redwood Park Communities and the area as a whole.
“We’ve been having conversations with other communities in Simcoe County about how we can support them in creating affordable housing, too," he says. "I really hope (what we do) can be a model for others to follow. I would love for Redwood to grow and expand only because I am so excited for what we’re doing, but it doesn’t have to be all about Redwood.
"I would love to be able to help other organizations do what we’ve been doing in other communities,” Kent adds. “We’ve always approached things in an innovative way and we feel a lot of what we are doing and how we are doing things are helping and are successful. We want communities right across Canada to be able to have that happening in their own communities in really big and powerful ways.”
A community, Kent says, is only as strong as the most vulnerable person within it.
“If we’ve got a lot of people who are struggling and vulnerable then we’ve got a really unhealthy community. We can have a stronger, more resilient community if we are bringing those who are vulnerable with us and lifting them up and encouraging them to break through some of the barriers they face," he says.
Life’s purpose
Seeing Redwood through its journey to where it is now has been a deeply personal one for Kent, who said growing up he always felt he had a purpose in life, but was just never quite able to figure out what it was.
“I got really passionate about this. As my wife said, I found out what I was hatched for. That’s why it’s become such a passionate thing for me. My life is so different now than it was before and I am just so grateful for it,” he says. “I couldn’t even imagine doing something differently than what we are doing at this point and I know Rhonda feels the same way.”
