Sanctuary Ministries of Toronto
In the midst of a housing crisis, we’re facing an unprecedented threat to our community—read below how you can support us.
Sanctuary is a church dedicated to love, compassion, and ensuring a sense of belonging.
Since 1992, we’ve had the goal of facilitating a safe haven in our neighbourhood, especially for those who most need spaces of safety and welcome. We opened our doors on Charles St. over three decades ago. We've shared meals, given out warm clothing, walked alongside each other through the joys and struggles of life, provided essential and life-saving health care services, and stood in the gap with those who have been marginalized, including those struggling with homelessness, addiction, and mental illness. We have grown and learned from those we’ve met.
We are truly in this together, and we want to stay among our community and watch it flourish.
But now, our mission is under threat.
In early September, we were served with a lawsuit from the condominium board next door. The condominium claims that the people who access our services, often unhoused, are a nuisance.
Our neighbours experiencing homelessness, poverty, and addiction are being treated as nuisances rather than as human beings in need of compassion.
This lawsuit is baseless. But more than that, it is a distraction. While we will be forced to fight in court, the housing crisis rages on. While we will go through meetings and sit in hearings, our unhoused neighbours continue to suffer without access to shelter, without enough safe spaces, and without enough care.
To be clear, the condominium’s complaint is not about the law; it is about people.
However, we cannot back down.
That is why we need your help. This is bigger than one church, one lawsuit, or one neighbourhood dispute.
It is about standing up for compassion over fear, and community over division.
We know that chronic social issues cannot be solved through lawsuits. We cannot litigate our way out of the overdose crisis. We cannot litigate away poverty, addiction, or homelessness.
What we can do is remain steadfast in our methodology of love, friendship, and welcome to all people in this Toronto community.
This is about more than one lawsuit.
This is about whether compassion still has a place in our city.
Stand With Us!
We are raising funds to assist with legal fees.
We are raising funds to assist with legal fees so we can defend our mission, not just for our sake but for every person who has ever found hope, healing, or community at our doorstep, and for all those who will in the years to come.
We are asking you to join us.
Help fund our legal defence so that we, and other similar communities, can continue the work that truly matters: welcoming the excluded and building a city where everyone belongs.
Your donation today helps us:
Cover legal costs
Protect a church that has been a home for countless people, one community of love and welcome.
Unable to donate? Here’s how you can still support us:
Please support us as we fight this lawsuit. If our legal funds exceed our legal costs, the remaining amount will be redirected to Sanctuary’s general funds.
In the midst of a lawsuit by their neighbours, I want to wholeheartedly declare that I believe in Sanctuary as they share community, dignity, and love with people most impacted by homelessness and marginalization.