One Homeless Night began with eight-year-old David Peter, son of Reynold and Kathy Mainse, who saw a homeless person and was compelled to do something. Within one week of his encounter, he raised over $4,000 for three organizations that are working with homelessness in his hometown of Hamilton.

The dream to help the homeless lay dormant until the vision re-emerged to focus Crossroads Missions initiatives on Homelessness in Canada. As a result, "Homeless at Home" was featured on 100 Huntley Street for the entire week of December 12-16, 2005.

In October of 2005, we organized two pilot projects of "One Homeless Night" street experience. Hosted in Toronto at Sanctuary Ministries, they proved to be very successful, with the help of the on-the-ground experts from many organizations. Their expertise will continue to drive our development of content and materials for One Homeless Night.