Progress on Ottawa’s Matthew Perry House ‘unreal’, sister of late actor says

Caitlin Morrison is the Executive Director of the Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada. She joined us this morning.

Progress is being made toward building a home for people in Ottawa recovering from addictions, named after the late Matthew Perry, according to his sister who heads of the foundation that bears Perry’s name.

Perry grew up in Ottawa before finding international stardom on the TV series “Friends.” He died in 2023 following challenges with addictions, something he had worked to help others overcome. In 2024, Perry’s family and friends launched a charitable foundation to help people beat addiction and prevent other families and friends from losing someone they love.

Part of the goal of the Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada is to build and operate a supportive recovery community—Matthew Perry House—that will provide housing, on-site care, and a comprehensive range of support services for over 160 individuals at a time. The initiative was first announced in January.

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Perry’s sister Caitlin Morrison is the executive director of the Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada. She tells CTV Morning Live that progress on the foundation’s projects has been quick.

“It’s beyond anything I could possibly imagine,” said Morrison. “I’ve been around the sector forever—it’s what I do—and right now, we should be thinking about, ‘how do we word our mission statement?’ But because so many organizations, so many people in Ottawa, so many people who are just extraordinary in this space have come together, we’ve been able to do things that I thought 20 years from now, maybe we’ll do this, but they came along and they said, ‘Yeah, you want to build a giant space for people? Let’s do that right now.’”

Matthew Perry House will consist of three buildings, offering a variety of housing options and amenity spaces. It will be built on Byng Drive, in between Island Park Drive and Carling Avenue, west of downtown Ottawa.

“We want to give people a place not just where they can get all the support they need, but also that they can support everybody else around them, that it can be this big kind of village,” Morrison said. “Let’s all find this really great life together, let’s be here as long as we need to be here. We don’t walk out the door until we say life is good and I’m ready to live an amazing life outside of here.”

A groundbreaking for Matthew Perry House is expected to take place sometime this year, with the goal of having people living in the facility in 2027. While the timeline remains unclear, Morrison says there will be a ceremony coming up this month to bless the land.

“In two weeks, we’re going to have a blessing ceremony for the land, which I’m very excited to do. It thinks about the land, who’s lived there before and what we intend to do on it,” she said.

Morrison expects a groundbreaking in “a few months from now” and then construction will begin.

“I think it’s amazing. This Matthew Perry House thing is unreal,” Morrison said.