Relèven

08/24/2026

Our CEO Graham Singh is at the Victoria Forum today, sitting on a panel about growing non-market housing in Canada — the kind of housing that serves people who need more than the market offers.

The conversation centres on a real gap: how do we move philanthropic capital and social-purpose lending toward housing for lower-income households, including people navigating mental health, disability, or housing insecurity? And what does that look like in practice?

It's exactly the kind of multi-sector table Relèven believes in — housing, finance, and community at the same conversation. 🏘️

08/13/2026

Something is shifting across Canada's faith communities.

From coast to coast, congregations, denominations, and faith leaders are asking the same question with growing urgency: what is our land for?

Not as an abstract theological question — but as a practical, neighbourly one. The housing need in every city is visible. The land that faith communities hold is real. The moment to connect those two things is now.

The Winnipeg Declaration is a national commitment to do exactly that — a 20-year pledge by faith communities to dedicate their land for affordable housing and community resilience, to be presented to national leaders this November.

If your community is ready to be part of that, we'd love to hear from you.

→ winnipegdeclaration.ca

The Winnipeg Declaration is a national movement mobilizing faith leaders, municipalities, housing partners, and community organizations to deploy church-owned land and buildings toward affordable housing and ending homelessness. Join faith communities, Indigenous partners, planners, and developers a

08/07/2026

If your congregation is sitting with questions about your building and land — and not quite sure where to start — this is for you.

Our free Property Strategy Course walks you through the key questions at your own pace: eight 30-minute sessions, self-guided, start whenever you're ready.

What does your building actually tell you about your future? What does your neighbourhood need? What are your real options?

We designed it for leaders who want clarity before they make any big decisions — not pressure, not a pitch. Just honest, practical grounding for the conversation ahead.

→ learning.releven.org

Is your congregation facing rising maintenance costs, underused space, or an uncertain property future? Enroll free in Relèven's Property Strategy Course — 8 modules designed for church leaders and board members covering property valuation, affordable housing, community hubs, financial sustainabi...

07/31/2026

Denominations hold hundreds — sometimes thousands — of properties. Each one carries history, community relationships, and real potential.

But managing a portfolio of faith properties today is genuinely complex: heritage considerations, changing congregation sizes, municipal planning processes, development economics, and the need to keep mission at the centre.

That's why Relèven works with denominational bodies — not just individual congregations — to build the strategy, tools, and partnerships that make portfolio-wide thinking possible.

If you lead or advise a denominational network navigating these questions, we'd be glad to connect.

→ releven.org/en/denominations

07/24/2026

Every week, we hear from congregations across Canada wrestling with the same question: We have this building, this land — how do we make it mean something for the neighbourhood around us?

It's the right question. And it's one we've been helping faith communities answer since 2016.

The land is there. The community need is real. What's often missing is the roadmap — and a partner who speaks both the language of mission and the language of development.

That's what we do. If your community is at that threshold, we'd love to talk.

→ releven.org/en/congregations

Not sure what to do with your church building? Relèven helps congregations across North America move from uncertainty to a clear, mission-aligned property plan.

07/23/2026

Canada's YMCA network holds some of the most strategically located real estate in the country. So do faith communities. The question isn't who owns the land — it's whether the sector has the tools to activate it.

Today our Director of Research Mike Wood Daly joins the YMCA Property Development Program panel at YMCA World Conference to explore exactly that: how organizations with deep community roots and underleveraged real estate can build financial resilience — without losing their mission in the process.

The coordination challenge and the housing opportunity are the same problem, whether you're a YMCA or a congregation.

Excited to see what emerges from this conversation. 🏗️

YMCA Canada

07/21/2026

Across North America right now, faith communities are at a threshold.

They hold land and buildings that have served their neighbourhoods for generations. And they're asking, with real courage and real care, what comes next.

The conversations we're part of — from city roundtables to one-on-one consultations with congregational leaders — give us genuine hope. Not because the path is simple, but because the commitment is real.

We're proud to walk alongside communities navigating that threshold. If you're in that place, you're not alone — and you don't have to figure it out by yourself.

releven.org/en/congregations

Not sure what to do with your church building? Relèven helps congregations across North America move from uncertainty to a clear, mission-aligned property plan.

07/09/2026

The boiler fails again. The insurance renewal arrives. Someone at the board meeting finally says it out loud: "What are we supposed to do with this building?"

That moment — equal parts grief and possibility — is exactly where Relèven's Property Strategy Course begins.

It's not a course about selling your church. It's a course about understanding what your building and land could actually do — so your congregation can make that decision together, clearly, and with confidence.

Eight sessions. Thirty minutes each. Self-paced. Free.

If someone in your congregation needs to hear this today, share it with them.

learning.releven.org

07/07/2026

St. Mary's Anglican Church in Harbour Mille, Newfoundland, was torn down this month.
Not because no one cared. A buyer came forward. Demolition was paused. And then the buyer couldn't get insurance — and that was the end of it.

The loss worth naming isn't architectural. It's civic.

For generations, that building was where Harbour Mille gathered. Funerals, weddings, community meetings, the rhythms of a small town that doesn't have a lot of other places to go. Buildings like St. Mary's were built and maintained by communities — often with public support, tax exemptions, and the donated labour of the people who lived around them. They were never purely private assets. They were infrastructure. The kind that rarely gets replaced once it's gone.

This is the pattern that runs underneath the housing conversation, the rural development conversation, the reconciliation conversation: faith communities across Canada are holding buildings that served a public function for over a century, and they're losing them — to deteriorating conditions, to insurance gaps, to buyers who can't close — faster than anyone has a framework to respond.

There is no national system for this. No coordinated early-warning process. No way for a diocese in Newfoundland to know that a congregation in Manitoba solved a nearly identical problem three years ago.

That's what Relèven is building. And it's why the Winnipeg Declaration matters — not as a symbolic gesture, but as the beginning of a national coordination layer that doesn't exist yet.

winnipegdeclaration.ca

07/03/2026

We're delighted to welcome Danya Assaf to the Relèven team as a Summer Intern.

Danya is a rising third-year JD/MBA candidate at the University of Toronto, bringing prior consulting experience from Ernst & Young. This summer, she's supporting Relèven's SPREIIT initiative — researching social-purpose real estate financing models and helping build momentum for a national trust structure that would unlock faith-held land for affordable housing at scale.

Her work is supported in part by her future firm, Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York — a signal of the calibre of institutional interest SPREIIT is beginning to attract.
Glad to have you on the team, Danya! 👋