What Eli's Place is.
Recovery isn't simply a clinical event. It's a life we lead.
Eli’s Place is a working farm north of Guelph, Ontario, where every part of life is designed to support recovery. It is not a hospital and not a crisis service. It is the recovery that comes after, for people ready to take it up. For young adults living with serious mental illness, it will be the first long-term therapeutic community in Canada to bring clinical care, meaningful work and belonging together in one place.
Guests will live here for around six months. There is real work to do on the land, clinical care alongside it, and the ordinary business of a life shared with other people. What makes it work is the combination and the time. Support from Eli’s Place continues past the stay itself, through each Guest’s move on to housing, education and work.
Eli’s Place is for young adults between 18 and 35 living with serious mental illness.
Who Eli’s Place is for.
Coming here will be a choice. Guests will arrive voluntarily and will be free to withdraw from the program at any time. The program will ask a great deal of the people in it: turning up to work, living closely with others, taking part in the life of the community day after day. It will suit someone past the acute stage of their illness and ready to use a long stretch of time to build something, rather than someone in immediate crisis. Where substance use is part of the picture, it will need to be settled rather than active.
Loyola House will be a home, not a hospital ward. Guests will look after themselves day to day, managing the ordinary business of daily living independently. Around that, Eli’s Place will provide what makes it possible: a room of one’s own, meals shared with the community, clinical care on site, and staff who take part in the life of the community alongside Guests.
No one will do this alone. Every Guest will have at least one family member or other committed support person who takes part in their treatment and in planning for what comes next. This is not a formality. Recovery has to hold after the stay ends, and it holds better when the people closest to a Guest have been part of building it.
Where Eli’s Place stands.
Eli’s Place It is not open yet. We expect to open in November 2026.
That means there is no admissions process in place, and we are not able to take applications or discuss individual circumstances. If you are looking for help for someone right now, that is a hard thing to read, and we are sorry it is not a different answer.
Our team is being assembled and the residence is being prepared. Admissions will open once that work is complete and the community that Guests will join is ready to receive them. We would rather say so plainly than begin conversations we are not yet ready to honour.
Before Eli’s Place opens, we continue to engage with the people it is being built for. The model is proven to work outside of Canada. What we want to understand better is how it will impact people here.
What’s happening at Eli’s Place between now and admission opening.
If the Eli’s Place mission touches your situation or your work, this is where you can help most right now. What we learn shapes how Eli’s Place opens: who we can reach, what we get right in the first year, and how quickly we can grow beyond the opening cohort.
Want to hear from Eli’s Place? After completing the survey, if you would like to hear from us as things develop, there is a separate place to leave your details. We expect to open admissions closer to the opening date and will say so here and to everyone on our lists when we do.
Act Now: Help Shape Eli’s Place
There are four surveys, one for prospective Guests, one for families and people supporting them, one for clinicians and referring professionals, and one for general interest.
15 to 30 minutes
not an application
Anonymous
It takes about 15 to 30 minutes because it covers the things that actually decide this: cost, distance and what the program asks of a family. It’s anonymous. To be clear, it’s not an application. It places no one in an admissions process, and no one will be contacted as a result of completing the survey.