What if a major housing unlock is hiding in plain sight?
This week, Ashley sits down with Laura Fortey — co-founder & COO of Reitium — to unpack how churches, hospitals, and other nonprofits can raise capital (donations, debt, or equity) to build affordable housing while keeping ownership of their land. No bulldozers-for-condos script. Instead: preserve the community anchor, add the homes, and make the math work with modern crowdfunding infrastructure.
They also dive into founder realities — burnout and reset, when to pivot vs. persist, what accelerators actually provide, and why the next era of building in Canada is more human, more in-person, and more collaborative.
In this episode:
- The “sleeping land” opportunity: why church & nonprofit sites matter
- How Reitium structures community-owned development (donations / debt / equity)
- Keeping the land vs. selling out: long-term income for nonprofits
- Policy, mayors, and moving faster by working with (not against) regulation
- Founder lessons: first-mover advantages, timing markets, and agile pivots
- Burnout, boundaries, and the rise of fractional/portfolio careers
- Why IRL rooms still beat DMs — and how serendipity changes outcomes
Topics: housing innovation · community-owned development · crowdfunding · founder resilience · fractional leadership · Canada’s next-gen builders
Find the full episode show notes — with Laura’s podcast and accelerator program mentions — at Canada Now HERE! 👈👈
Also, subscribe to the Canada Now newsletter for updates (and vip perks)!
🎧 Timestamps:
01:15 — Laura Fortey joins: A founder’s journey from burnout to purpose
03:30 — What is Reitium? Crowdfunding affordable housing through community ownership
05:45 — The church land model: keeping ownership while creating homes
08:20 — How donations, debt, and equity fuel nonprofit-led development
10:40 — Tokenization, regulation, and why timing the market matters
13:15 — Lessons in agility: pivoting while staying true to your mission
15:40 — Accelerators, mentorship, and learning from ecosystems abroad
18:20 — Why in-person connection still beats remote networking
21:30 — The rise of fractional and portfolio careers for founders
24:00 — Building sustainable companies without losing yourself
27:10 — Generational shifts: younger builders, new priorities
30:05 — Real-world optimism: the future of housing and impact in Canada
33:00 — Networking events and building Canada’s tech ecosystem
36:00 — Women founders, capital gaps, and fundraising realities
39:30 — Advice for new builders and lessons from global accelerators
43:00 — The future of work, balance, and purpose-driven leadership
46:15 — Outro: hope, community
Love the show? Help it grow!
→ Subscribe, Review, and Share 🍁
Follow Canada Now for bold ideas and real conversations shaping what’s next in Canada. 🇨🇦
→ All Links (including socials)
→ YouTube
→ Canada Now Newsletter (subscriber perks coming soon!)
Meet the host, Ashley Smith! 🙋♀️
→ Ashley's links (social, website, + more)
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.