An organization that helps thousands of Calgarians each year is now in need of help itself, with fears an incoming rent increase could jeopardize the services they provide.
The Southeast Calgary Resource Centre has been operating in their space in a Calgary Housing Company (CHC) building for more than 20 years; a service provided by the Millican-Ogden Community Association.
The centre provides services like food support, housing support, clothing donations, as well as assistance with income support, job hunting and building resumes.
Originally designed to help people living in the Millican-Ogden communities, the resource centre has expanded its reach to anyone in the city in need.
“We help just shy of 10,000 people per year out of this little space,” Millican-Ogden Community Association president John McDonald told Global News.
McDonald said the organization is running out of food faster than previous years as demand continues to increase for support organizations, and that demand has begun to stretch thin their ability to provide supports.
“There are folks who are out there wondering if they’re going to feed their kids tomorrow, and we can’t help everyone, as hard as we try,” McDonald said.
For 15 years, the centre had a lease agreement with the Calgary Housing Company to pay nominal rent, but that monthly rent charge increased to $550 in 2018.
The Millican-Ogden Community Association and Calgary Housing Company are currently renegotiating a two-year lease with extensions, with rent set to increase to $700 per month.
According to McDonald, the rent increase will divert funds and put more pressure on the services the centre provides.
“Our funding sources give us so much money per year and they’ve told us to ‘spend no more money on rent than what we’ve said you can already spend, because we want our money spent on programming,'” McDonald said.
“Every dime that we spend on rent is not spent on delivering a service to someone.”
The Calgary Housing Company said it too is a non-profit organization that uses the rent to fund the operations of its various affordable housing complexes.
CHC acting president Bo Jiang said negotiations on a rent increase have been ongoing for three years, but “stopped” in November, with the rent increase reflecting the organization’s need to break even with operational costs of the building.
“The biggest thing in terms of our operational effectiveness is to ensure the lowest cost for residents on a day-to-day basis,” Jiang told Global News.
“Our partners that partner with us, the expectation from our perspective, is that they will be at break even (costs)… because whatever the cost is to run the operation and administer the housing needs, is appropriately charged.”
Jiang said the increase will also help cover costs of future repairs that were identified in a recent engineering building condition assessment, in an effort to avoid a “large lump sum cost” to the organization down the road.
“We need to make sure we manage these properties in such a way that we are not costing anything more than needs to,” Jiang said.
“The break-even cost is a major factor for us.”
Late last year, the Millican-Ogden Community Association wrote a letter to Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek, CHC, and city council to request rental relief for five years.
That letter outlined limited options for the centre to make up the extra money required for rent including: diverting funding from programming, reduce salaries and staffing at the centre, divert revenues from rental fees at the local community arena, or hand over responsibility of the organization to the City of Calgary.
“Our current extension, and we’re told it’s our last extension, ends on May 31,” McDonald said. “So we’re into the six- or seven-week crunch time.”
Jiang said CHC partners with many agencies and non-profits in its buildings with many on agreements that pay “break even fees,” with the hope an agreement can be reached with the Southeast Community Resource Centre.
“We would love for the relationship to continue with this partnership, because I don’t think there’s a doubt in terms of the value that they provide to the community of Ogden,” Jiang said.
“For us, that’s the ideal outcome.”