After more than a decade, Kingston-based co-operative Yes We Can is being forced out of its midtown office space.
The city has purchased the commercial building the co-op operates out of on 206 Concession Street with a plan to turn it into a stabilization housing facility operated by Addiction and Mental Health Services, in order to help address the homelessness crisis.
The already struggling co-op learned last week that they were effectively being evicted, along with the building’s other tenants, and have to be out by June 30th.
“It’s like a jab, a jab to the heart,” the co-op’s manager, Sindy Gable, told Global News.
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Yes We Can is a joint business owned by six individuals with developmental disabilities. It began operating in 1994 and provides documentation processing for other organizations.
“It’s sorting documentation and organizing, removing staples, taping, organizing face sheets so they’re in numerical order, alphabetical order,” Gable explains.
However, she says the work has been drying up as many organizations have been making the shift to digitize their documentation. The added pressure of having to move in the next couple months has the co-op stressed.
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“It’s not enough time to get things set up and move and keep working and train people if we have to go on a different bus schedule, the anxiety of training at a new place, so they can get around the new place,” Gable says.
In an interview with Global News on Monday, Kingston’s director of housing and social services, Ruth Noordegraaf, acknowledged the purchase would mean displacing the building’s current tenants.
“We know that it’s not easy to relocate and we are definitely very mindful of the impact of the current tenants. We do understand that the current tenants are working with the real estate brokers to look at some other options,” Noordegraaf said.
Gable says she has already begun the search for a new location for the co-op and is hopeful she can find one in the same neighbourhood.
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