2016 - victoria cool aid society · 2 250383177 healthy granola and marathons by khalilah alwani...

Victoria Cool Aid Society 102-749 Pandora Avenue

Victoria BC, Canada, V8W 1N9 tel: 250.383.1977 · fax: 250.383.1639www.CoolAid.org · [email protected]

Carl Young at home

John Crean, Manager of Housing,

accepts a lifetime achievement

award from the BC Non-Profit

Housing Association.

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Reflections On A Lifetime in Housing

In the early days, before Cool Aid operated any housing at all, housing manager John Crean

describes the “people we saw in the shelter over and over and over, and how transforming it would be for their lives if we could help them break the cycle of eviction and homelessness.”

Housing Numbers374 apartments are operated by Cool Aid.

360 is the number of new apartments Cool Aid plans to build.

185 more apartments are currently under development.

$20,000 in donations pays for one new apartment, after government and partner contributions are added in.

In This IssueCarl Young . . . . . . . . 1John Crean Reflects . . . 1Granola & Marathons . . 2Meet a Cool Volunteer . . 3Housing Gets Funded . . 4Tenant Linda Lumsden . . 5Cool Programs . . . . . . 7Poem: Flightless Birds . . 7Special Gifts . . . . . . . 8

What I Learned From Carl Youngby Alan Rycroft

I met Carl Young just once. But he made a strong impression on me. When he and his dog Turbo

died in a car accident a year later, on March 21, 2015, I was amazed at what this simple, caring man had accomplished. Carl Young lived his whole life in the family home near Spectrum School. Due to a disability, he was unable to hold a job. He never had a girlfriend nor fathered any children. But he was a happy man. Neighbours described Carl as a soft-spoken man with a heart of gold.

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Victoria Cool Aid Society Journal | 2016

250.383.1977 · www.CoolAid.org2

Victoria Cool Aid Society Journal

Healthy Granola and Marathonsby Khalilah Alwani

Every Step Counts and Thrifty Foods partnered for the successful launch

of Granola That Counts in January 2015, selling over 860 pounds of delicious granola and raising funds for the courageous runners struggling to overcome

mental health and addictions challenges through fitness and nutrition. Every Step Counts participants and supporters were out in force for the 2015 Times Colonist 10K and Goodlife Fitness Victoria Marathon. Together, these three projects raised over $10,000 for Every Step Counts!

CoolAid.org/esc

He had a keen memory for names and numbers and always greeted everyone by name. If you shared your date of birth and phone number, Carl would call you every birthday to wish you well. He was generous with his friends, some of whom were homeless. Even though he himself lived in poverty, he allowed many people to stay on his property. His home was a safe haven for those who needed a coffee, a meal, a Lucky or a warm and dry couch to sleep on. Most of all, Carl loved his dog Turbo. He is most remembered in his Saanich neighbourhood as the nice fellow who walked his dog several times daily. Or, as I was told, that Turbo, a large, strong dog, was fond of walking Carl! When I met Carl he had no living family left. His brother had died several years ago and Carl inherited the family home, after his parents both passed away. Thankfully, at the suggestion

of a friend, Carl Young found a lawyer and had a will drawn up. He left the family home, his only asset, to Cool Aid. Carl specified that he wanted to benefit homeless pets, as well as people like his friends. Most of the funds from the property sale will contribute to building eight or more apartments for people, like his friends, who are homeless. A sum of $50,000 will endow a Pets in Need Fund with the Victoria Foundation to provide food, medicines, medical procedures, etc. for pets whose owners can’t afford these for their beloved companions. I learned something deep in my heart from Carl Graham Edward Young that I had only known as an intellectual concept: Everyone can make a difference. Rest in Peace, Carl Graham Edward Young. We have much to learn from you.

CoolAid.org/bequest

...continued from page 1‘Carl Young’

Story Icons

A special thanks to Cool Aid’s wonderful clients and dedicated employees, volunteers and donors for sharing your stories with us.

EditorNorman Gidney

WritersAlan RycroftAnna TobiasChristopher GeaterDave FracyGeri Nolan HilfikerJason DuderKhalilah AlwaniNorman Gidney

ProofreaderHelma Libick

Photographers & ArtistsBCNPHAChristopher GeaterJeffrey KeaysJoe Newell ArchitectKen NealMartin WrightSarah Davie

Design & LayoutKen NealiD2 Communications

PublisherAlan Rycroft

Submissions:[email protected]

Community Health ServicesSupportive Housing Emergency and Transitional SheltersAll Cool Aid Programs

SupportServices

250.383.1977 · www.CoolAid.org 3 Victoria Cool Aid Society Journal

Granola That Counts

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Geri Nolan Hilfiker facilitates the

‘Open Art Studio’ at Sandy Merriman

House for Women.

“My favourite part is to be able to offer positive support to assist lives in transition.”

– Geri Nolan Hilfiker, Open Art Studio Facilitatorat Sandy Merriman House for Women

Meet A Cool Volunteer: Geri Nolan Hilfikerby Geri Nolan Hilfiker

I am an artist and art therapist who taught photography at Nova

Scotia College of Art & Design for 18 years before changing my career path and residence at age 50. I work as a resident worker at a transitional residence for high-risk teens. In my volunteer role at Sandy Merriman House for women, I facilitate a weekly open art therapy studio. It is open to all women, whether they reside at the shelter or not. I provide a wide variety of art materials for individuals to create, using materials of their choice. Occasionally I bring an art activity to share. It’s an opportunity for relaxation, creativity, stress reduction and building of social skills. My favourite part is to be able to offer positive support to assist lives in transition. My least favourite part is having to leave when support is necessary. My first volunteer work was as a youth, age 14, spending time with girls my age who were deaf or blind, or both, living in a boarding school where my mom

worked as a nurse. My upbringing instilled a sense of community support – to help where you can. I do not judge others by the way they look, or by the things that occur to cause them to become homeless. We all belong.Homelessness is a condition, a circumstance. It is not the person. I never walk past a homeless person on the street without saying hello. My advice, I guess, is not to disregard people we see on the streets. They are not invisible. In my volunteer role, I am motivated by the courage and emotional strength it takes to survive in poverty, isolation and homelessness. I return every week because making art is empowering in positive, nurturing ways. I see relaxation, social interaction and building communication skills. There is a healing component in creativity. I cannot imagine myself homeless, yet try to be aware that it is always a possibility. Things can happen to any one of us that would put us in that position.

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Artistic rendering of Cottage Grove

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Funding Falls Into Place for Housing by Norman Gidney

Like building blocks, the funding to build housing for the homeless is

falling into place, coming from governments, donors and special fundraising events.

Cottage Grove for Seniors Homelessness hasn’t ended but Victoria Cool Aid Society’s next project, to house 45 seniors in Saanich, is now fully funded and can start construction.The last piece to drop into place was a $675,000 grant from the Capital Regional District housing trust. “There is a growing demand for available and affordable housing for our elderly population,” said Oak Bay Mayor Nils Jensen, who chairs the CRD board. “Cottage Grove is an excellent example of organizations working together to provide

residents the opportunity to continue to live independently.”Cottage Grove will house homeless and at-risk seniors with 24-hour support staff, a daily hot meal and healthy activities. The CRD’s announcement means Cottage Grove now has reached its target of $7.4 million and construction is expected to start in 2016. Major funding is coming from the province, while grants of $112,000 each have been approved by Saanich and Victoria. It’s the first time that Victoria has contributed to a housing project outside the municipality. Cottage Grove is on Quadra Street, a property fronted by tall Garry oaks, just a short walk from the city boundary along Tolmie Street.

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Next building, theDr. Joe Haegert Centre Cool Aid is working diligently to complete the purchase of a vacant building in Victoria. After renovations, it could house one hundred people! Within the building will be a variety of health and social service supports to help the residents live healthy and productive lives. The building will be named for the family doctor who spent more than 40 years working at Cool Aid, beginning just two years after the organization started in Fernwood in 1968: Dr. Joe Haegert. The capital cost to complete the Dr. Joe Haegert Centre is estimated at $9 million, with $2 million needed from private donations. Every $20,000 in gifts will pay for one apartment, after government and partner contributions are added. Cool Aid would also like to include two palliative care apartments for people without homes who are nearing the end of their lives and need a dignified place to stay, with care, during their last days. We need to raise $500,000 more from individuals, companies and foundations in order to attract sufficient government and partner funds to build and operate the new Dr. Joe Haegert Centre. Already Cool Aid’s friends (donors) and family (staff and directors) have raised the first $1.5 million.

Cedar Grove is growing too A former motel on the Gorge is Cool Aid’s third new housing project. Cool Aid owns the property and partners with Island Health, which provides


Help End Homelessness Campaign Chair Rob Reid shows the

Cottage Grove site to the media.

Linda Lumsden at home

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Linda Lumsden at Mike Gidora Place by Anna Tobias

“This is the best place I have ever lived in my life… it is more safe

than I have ever felt in my life.” Linda, or Lin to everyone who knows her, has lived at Mike Gidora Place for over a decade. She came to Cool Aid via Hope House, now the Human Exchange – after fleeing an abusive relationship. Prior to that, Lin was inadequately housed in places that had bed bugs and no social supports. Lin is a survivor of childhood traumas that included much abuse. As an after-effect of this abuse, Lin has tenaciously lived with agoraphobia and obsessive compulsive disorder. Now, having a safe and supportive home, Lin jokes, “I leave things crooked sometimes…I am working on it!”

Eventually, she came to Sandy Merriman House, Cool Aid’s emergency shelter for women, which found her temporary housing with a family, until she was able to move into a permanent home of her own. When Lin first came to Cool Aid, Mike Gidora Place was subsidized housing. Lin reflects that when supports were added it was fortuitous for her, as she had been living with mental health issues for years. Lin describes the change that having staff on site 24 hours, 7 days a week, has made in her life. For the first time ever, she feels safe and supported. At Mike Gidora Place, Lin lives in a home where her three children and eight grandchildren come to visit. It is filled with pictures of her family and neighbours.

Lin describes Mike Gidora Place as a big, happy family where staff and tenants have created community.

CoolAid.org/housing

funding for 24/7 staffing to meet the diverse needs of the tenants. Cedar Grove currently provides 21 homes for people marginalized for various reasons and who need safe, affordable housing. Cool Aid proposes to demolish the two small motel buildings on the site and put up a new residential building of three or four storeys, adding an additional 39 apartments. About $2 million will be needed from individuals, foundations and businesses. No one will be displaced by the construction.

CoolAid.org/buildhomes

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A younger John Crean stands proudly in

front of Cool Aid’s first apartment building.

‘John Crean reflects’...continued from page 1

John’s early efforts, tenants in all Cool Aid buildings participate in janitorial and maintenance duties for which they earn an honourarium, and they help create unique programs in each building for the social and creative needs of tenants. Since those early days, John Crean has played a central role in the creation of each of Cool Aid’s properties. John is a modest man who, when praised, always shares the credit for Cool Aid’s success in helping people improve their lives: “It’s no one person who has created today’s Cool Aid, but the efforts of each and every one of us has moved this organization forward.” As well, he is aware and appreciative of the critical support from governments of every political stripe in funding the construction and operation of all Cool Aid’s programs. “We would not have any buildings if we did not partner with the governments of the day.” Today, thanks to John and many others, Cool Aid houses over 374 men and women who were previously homeless in the Capital Region. John has also been a leader in the development of the next 185 apartments Cool Aid will build in 2016 and beyond. “Every day I am excited to wake up and get to my job. I can’t imagine anything more rewarding. When I ‘retire’ you won’t have seen the last of me,” says John. “I’ll be with you always.”

John Crean has worked for Cool Aid since 1990. He is retiring in 2016.

CoolAid.org/housing

In those early days Cool Aid operated an emergency shelter but no housing. In fact, there was no supportive housing in B.C. at all. It was a shortage that John Crean and others were soon to address. It was the realization that some people need housing with ongoing support that led John and others to build Cool Aid’s first apartment building – Swift House. The property was also the province’s first supportive housing building, with staff available around the clock to help with tenants’ needs and personal growth. John was Swift House’s first housing support worker and it proved to be a learning ground out of which a new vision of tenant involvement would grow. The year was 1992, and there was a labour strike at Cool Aid’s

new building, which contained 26 apartments, the Streetlink emergency shelter and the Medical Clinic. Day after day, week after week, the strike dragged on for six months and the burden on John grew as he strived single-handedly to help his many tenants. “I almost quit during the strike,” reflects John. “It was hard on me and it was hard on my family, and it was hard on my tenants and their visitors.” But then, one day during the strike, he had an epiphany that would shift Cool Aid’s whole housing philosophy. It was the day one of the tenants dropped by his office and, noticing his distress, said

“Do you need any help?” “All of a sudden I realized it wasn’t just me running this building, this community, it was all of us, the tenants and staff, we all had a responsibility and a common interest in helping to create a liveable community where our tenants could stabilize their lives and live with a measure of peace and security,” says John. So he invited each of them individually to Cool Aid’s first tenant meeting, which almost everyone attended, and it was decided that tenants would have a more active role in the building’s upkeep and activities. Today, this philosophy of tenant involvement and the development of community in each building, is central to Cool Aid’s philosophy of providing safe and secure homes and helping each individual grow to their full potential. Thanks to


Lin and other participants show

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REES’s new home at Swift House

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Golf players at the

Drive to End Homelessness

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Flightless Birdsby Jason Duder

This is an excerpt from the full poem.

Forty babes gathered in a battered truck box driven in awe to the schoolhouse docks taken to ravage the savage within shamed, blamed, and renamed for their sins … misguided eaglets grounded by fog fed the grossest of food, not fit for dogs madly clad as white man’s clones sisters and brothers, divided and alone regimented by rules, not given proper tools skinned and disciplined by the falsehood of foolsassaulted with rulers and salted belts for speaking in signs and dreaming of pelts … strip us of our faith, hollow our cores we will not speak Indian anymore parrot the priest and you’re surely to earn but the harder you study, the less you learn muted songbirds speak English alone as Grandmother’s songs are sunk like a stone …

no moose, elk, beaver, deer or fish just cracked wheat and cold mush in a dish

our teachings of culture for the new generations cannot be of self-abuse and self-medication we must look within for our richness and wealth we must improve our mental and physical health we must soar high, we demand to be heard who will give wings to the flightless birds?

Raymond James Drive to End Homelessness at Bear Mountainby Dave Fracy

More than 100 golfers played

the spectacular and challenging Bear Mountain golf course on Aug. 28 and raised over $34,000 for Cool Aid’s housing campaign and the Endowment Fund. It was the third annual – and biggest yet – Drive to End Homelessness, with sponsorship led again by Raymond James. It was created by Brad Clark, a Raymond James financial advisor and Cool Aid director.

drivetoendhomelessness.ca

Community Kitchen Program at the Downtown Community Centre

Over the past year, the Downtown

Community Centre on Pandora Avenue has opened up its kitchen to the community like never before. We’re hosting community cooking workshops each week that bring together people of all ages to explore nutrition, food security and, of course, the joy of cooking and eating with friends. The Community Kitchen Program is generously supported by the Victoria Foundation.

CoolAid.org/dcc

REES Program Moves to Swift StreetCool Aid’s REES Program, supporting adults to overcome mental health and addictions challenges, happily moved into its new home at 465 Swift

Street, at the foot of Chinatown this summer. Come on down and enjoy the new space as well as the new public-use computers generously donated by local tech store Tesseract 2.0.

CoolAid.org/rees



Special Gifts All your life you have worked to make a better world for your loved ones and the community. Have you considered a charitable gift in your will as a unique way to provide practical, long-term assistance to the most vulnerable people in our community? Here are some other special gifts to consider.

Gifts of Stocks and Funds In Canada, there are very good tax benefits for direct gifts of publicly listed securities as no capital gains taxes apply to the donated securities. Cool Aid partners with the Victoria Foundation to process gifts of stocks and mutual funds. In 2017, these same tax benefits will also apply to gifts from the sale of private stocks.

Charitable Bequest in Your Will Carl Young is helping end homelessness in our community because he left a gift in his will that Cool Aid will use to build new apartments and a Pets In Need Fund. If you own a home or other significant assets, you can look after your family and also leave a legacy gift that will benefit Cool Aid’s vulnerable clients for many years to come. Some people consider 5% to 10% to charity as a guideline for a will that is primarily meant to benefit family members.

RRSP, RRIF, TFSA, etc.

Many registered savings accounts, such as your Retirement Savings Plan, allow for a beneficiary to be named. Please consider making the Victoria Cool Aid Society one of your standard beneficiaries.

Gift of Life Insurance Designating the Victoria Cool Aid Society as a beneficiary of your life insurance policy can provide a substantial gift in the future for a relatively low cost each year. Signing over an old or unneeded life insurance policy to Cool Aid is another way of making a tax-deductible gift to help end homelessness.

Endowment Funds Cool Aid Endowment Funds have been established at the Victoria Foundation and the Vancouver Foundation, for those wanting to make a gift that keeps on giving. The Endowments are professionally invested and the returns support Cool Aid programs flexibly and forever. Donations from the USA can receive a US tax receipt when given through the Friends of the Vancouver Foundation.

Gifts of Real Estate Starting in 2017, gifts from the proceeds of a real estate sale will also benefit the donor or estate significantly by eliminating the capital gains tax on the portion of the proceeds given to a charity within 30 days. Consult with your professional

advisor if you are considering a gift from a real estate sale. Other Valuable Assets Assets in many forms such as cash, precious metals, artwork, jewelry, business assets, intellectual property, etc. can be left in your will, or given to the Victoria Cool Aid Society. Tax receipts can be issued for most such gifts. Feel free to call us to discuss your creative ideas.

Trusts and Annuities Trusts and annuities can have significant tax benefits, providing an opportunity to set aside a gift of cash, securities or real estate for the Victoria Cool Aid Society, while you receive a guaranteed annual income during your lifetime. There are many different types of trusts and annuities and you will want to consult a professional advisor before making your decision.

Talk It Over It is a good idea to consult your partner and family about special gifts. As well, Cool Aid recommends you speak with your lawyer, financial advisor or accountant before making any large gift, to ensure that you or your estate is receiving the best possible tax benefit. Maximizing your tax benefits may allow you to make a larger gift and leave more for your loved ones than you thought possible.

Please feel free to call us to discuss your giving options.

2016 - victoria cool aid society · 2 250383177 healthy granola and marathons by khalilah alwani...

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