‘How about helping the poor?’ So he did
When Nick Volk graduated from Harvard University with a degree in international relations, no one would have guessed he’d wind up in Toronto building affordable housing.
He wanted to join the U.S. navy, see the world, immerse himself in other cultures and spend his left as a globetrotting diplomat. Most of that came true. The day after his convocation, the 21-year-old New Yorker headed to a naval recruiting office and signed up. Over the next three years, he saw much of the Far East. Still eager for adventure when he left the navy, he spent six months backpacking through the Philippines, Southeast Asia and India.
At 24, he returned to the U.S., married the woman he’d left behind and joined the U.S. Foreign Service. He and his wife Barbara served in Cambodia, Thailand and Bangladesh. In 1964, Volk returned to Washington to find out where he would be posted next.
To his surprise, it was Toronto. He was to become the U.S. consulate’s communications director. Volk didn’t expect to stay long. But he and his wife fell in love with the place. “Five years later the State Department wanted to pack us off again, so I quit.”
He got a job in public relations at the CBC and stayed 23 years. His four children were born in this country. He became president of the Harvard Club of Toronto and director of the Harvard Alumni Association in Canada. Things were going swimmingly until his wife came home one day and said: “How about helping the poor? You’ve been helping the rich.”
Brought up short, Volk volunteered at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, a Catholic charity that provides food, clothing, furniture and friendship to people in need, and volunteered. What he saw on his visits appalled him. “I was going into some dreadful places that I couldn’t imagine people living in. So I said, that’s it, I’ve got to build housing.”
Volk had no knowledge of the construction industry, no experience raising funds, no training in engineering or design and no obvious qualifications to be a developer. The two things he had were research skills and the ability to connect with people.
He found a real estate agent who came up with a 1.5-acre plot in East York (formerly occupied by a warehouse and strip mall) for $92.3 million. He lobbied thenpremier Bob Rae to provide $23 million and hired an architect, took bids from construction companies and awarded the contract. He worked with the city of Toronto, the province and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to create a 164-unit affordable apartment building with big meeting rooms and plenty of common space so the residents could get to know each other and their children could play safely. Gower Place opened in 1994 “to some doubt and a fair amount of acclaim,” he recalled.
The doubt evaporated in 2000 when the project won an award of excellence from the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association for “responding to tenant and community needs with imagination and insight.”
But Volk had already moved on. He joined a Habitat for Humanity house building crew in Waterloo. The U.S-based charity, championed by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, was in its infancy in Canada. It had one branch with a clerk. Volk became chairman of its Canadian board and hired a talented young manager named Neil Hetherington who built the organization into one of the most dynamic and respected housing charities in the country.
Now a proud Canadian citizen, Volk is embarking on his latest project, a 250unit non-profit housing development in East York designed to meet the needs of mother-led families. He is working with East York East Family Resources (EYET), which has 30 years of experience in the neighbourhood and the Daniels Corp., a leading developer of non-profit housing. He aims to keep rents at 25 per cent of the market rate by using land owned by the city, tapping into federal and provincial infrastructure funding and private mortgage financing plus personal and corporate donations. “I keep pushing every button I can find.”
Volk has little patience for people who say they’d like to volunteer but they don’t have the time, the right skills, the right connections or the physical stamina. He had a full-time job when he started. He knew next to nothing about housing. He is in his 80s now and has no intention of slowing down.
His advice to those still hovering on the sidelines: Find a need. Ask what you can do to help. And do it.