30    
  Spring/Summer 2026
F
our years less a day – that’s 
how long transitional 
housing gives someone to 
stabilize in Ontario before 
they’re expected to move on: stable, 
independent and ready.
Sally Ledger, senior advisor and former 
interim CEO with Ontario Aboriginal 
Housing Services (OAHS), knows that 
timeline. During her career, she’s seen 
what happens when the clock runs out. 
“If you aren’t stable by then, you have to 
transition out anyway,” she says.
For Indigenous women, that end point 
is a matter of life or death. According 
to RCMP data, Indigenous women are 
murdered, go missing and are trafficked 
at rates that constitute, by any measure, a 
national emergency. Housing insecurity 
feeds directly into those conditions; 
when people are pushed out of transi-
tional housing before they’re ready – or 
if they can’t access it at all – they become 
vulnerable to exploitation and traf-
ficking on the streets, in temporary shel-
ters or with people they don’t fully trust.
The four-year mark doesn’t end the 
need – it just ends the survival support. 
In Ontario alone, urban Indigenous 
TRANSITIONAL HOUSING
BUILDING with SPIRIT
Sally Ledger highlights the needs of Indigenous 
women in transitional housing
By Bryan Hansen
families need 22,000 housing units that 
do not exist. Behind that number is a 
young woman Ledger remembers from 
Kenora. Deep in addiction, her spirit 
oppressed by years of being told she 
didn’t matter, she entered transitional 
housing. A year later, she is clean, sober 
and working at a retail job.
“Some people might frown and say, ‘Oh, 
she’s just a retail worker / minimum 
wage employee,’” Ledger says. “But she’s 
making her own money. She’s clean. 
She’s ready to move out on her own 
because for the first time, she feels safe. 
That’s what happens when you take care 
of the spirit – not just the material things 
you can see.”
That woman managed to beat the clock, 
but the system isn’t built for her to win. 
It’s built to process her – four years, 
less a day, after which she will still need 
ongoing support to remain grounded 
and able to afford housing.
“The policy says we can stabilize you in 
four years, and if you aren’t stable by 
then, you have to transition out anyway,” 
Ledger says. “But healing from violence, 
addiction or generational trauma doesn’t 
follow a calendar. A woman might be 
ready to look for work, then have a 
setback, then try again.
“It’s the spirit that gets worn down first. 
And you can’t rush a spirit back to health 
on a government timeline.” 
FROM BUNK TO SPIRIT
“Indigenous-led housing isn’t just about 
who owns the bricks,” Ledger says. “It’s 
about how those bricks are arranged.” At 
OAHS, service providers help design the 
program rooms. Frontline staff map out 
the shared spaces. Cultural safety isn’t 
an add-on – it’s built in from the start. 
Support staff often have lived experi-
ence; they’ve navigated the same systems 
and don’t operate at a distance.
“In mainstream housing, they deal 
with the physical things,” Ledger says. 
“Within the culture, we take care of the 
spirit.” Housing becomes the anchor. 
Health, education, employment are 
pulled in around the person. “We don’t 
silo and separate,” Ledger says. “We deal 
with them as a whole.”
Smudging went from a crime to a human 
right, and that shift didn’t happen 
by accident. It happened because 
Sally Ledger.

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