Salus FAQs

Salus offers individualized mental health services and supportive, long-term housing. Over more than 45 years of working with thousands of adults with persistent mental illness and substance use, we know that our blend of stable housing and person-centred support improves the quality of life, enhances individual abilities, provides employment and other opportunities and contributes to recovery.

Salus works with adults with persistent mental health, substance use and other challenges.  Their lives before coming to Salus have been marked by isolation, hospitalization and homelessness. Many have not had a place to call home for years. All of them arrive with hope for a better life.

For many, a home is simply a building with walls and a roof. For Salus clients, adults who have lived in shelters, on the streets or in hospitals, a supportive home is a critical step to recovery, better health and living independently. Our supportive housing model delivers individually tailored support in a home-like setting to help improve quality of life. In addition to mental health, many adults living in Salus supportive housing struggle with substance use, chronic health conditions, developmental disabilities, acquired brain injury, physical disabilities, trauma from past violence and poverty.

Our new 54-unit independent living building on Capilano Drive will be Canada’s first purpose-built supportive housing community for older adults with a long history of mental illness and related challenges. It will address a critical but overlooked segment of Ottawa’s current housing crisis and meet older adults’ specific needs for care, support, socialization and community integration.

Adults whose lives have included mental illness and substance use, poverty, homelessness and complex health and social needs experience the effects of aging at a much earlier age, 40 in some cases. Many die from natural causes decades before they should. For these adults, aging in the right place means finding a supportive community with easier access to health and other supports, programs to overcome isolation and trained staff who understand the physical and mental challenges they face because of their lived experiences.