The Mainstay Housing Vision

Sure people have been struggling as long as humankind has been here with mental health issues, but people have lives as well. They are more than just symptoms and medications. There is a new sense in the past 20 years of looking at somebody's life as a whole and realizing that everyone has the right to a full, satisfying and productive life. What Mainstay does is take a role in making sure that people have those types of lives.
Gord Singer, Mainstay Housing Tenant

Mainstay Housing serves people who are living with mental illness. Our first act is to provide safe, affordable housing, but the organization goes much further than just furnishing shelter. We work to help the people we serve build new lives from a home base. A home is just the beginning. We believe that our society will be a richer place if all its members feel a sense of themselves as active participants in the greater community. Often there are enormous hurdles to overcome before even the first steps towards that goal can be met. Mainstay works through its organizational structure, through its support network and through its initiatives with community partners to achieve those steps.

Organizational Structure
Mainstay is a tenant centered organization. One third of the Board of Director seats are reserved for Mainstay tenants. This is significant as historically people with mental health problems have not had their voices heard. As Gord Singer says, “If an organization values the people it serves, it will listen to them and give them a say in the management of the organization. Mainstay does this.”

Support Network
Our supportive housing workers, our community meetings and our networks with support agencies all work to engage our tenants as people capable of finding the best solutions to the issues of day-to-day living. We see our role as nurturing the seeds of positive change that lie within everyone.

Initiatives with Community Partners
It is particularly in our innovative partnerships that Mainstay is able to manifest our vision of consumer-survivors making their lives three dimensional and whole again. A doorway into the workforce can dramatically change the lives of people living with mental illness. Mainstay is in a creative and dynamic relationship with a business run by and for consumer-survivors.

Click here to learn about Mainstay's relationship with Fresh Start.