Lift Community Services seeks qathet Regional District funds

qathet Regional District (qRD) will give further consideration to a $50,000 grant-in-aid for Lift Community Services’ Community Resource Centre (CRC).

Lift representatives appeared before qRD’s board of directors on June 28 to appeal for the grant-in-aid after it was not recommended at a finance committee meeting on June 7.

Jessica Colesanto, Lift community support programs manager, said the CRC is open 16 hours a week, Monday to Thursday, noon to 4 pm and offers a hot lunch program and services such as legal aid.

She said in a year, the CRC has 10,000 connections between patrons and staff.

“Those are actual conversations we are having with community members,” said Colasanto.

Lift executive director Stuart Clark said based on concerns that came up at the finance meeting, he wanted to clarify them. Regarding neighbour concerns, he said it was a big issue and a big concern for Lift, too.

“We share a lot of concerns with our neighbours about the change in our community, and the impacts to our neighbours around our clients,” said Clark. “We believe we have pretty strong relationships with our neighbours and respond to 100 per cent of concerns, although we keep getting more and are responding every day. We do put money up to help keep things clean and beautify our neighbours’ sites.”

Clark said Lift is a big organization now and has $10 million annually in revenue. Lift has been able to steward operational reserves, wanting to keep three months of operations funding in the bank account, which is about $1.6 million, and that is where the bulk of Lift’s reserves go, he added.

Clark said for the past 10 years, Lift has put its own money into the CRC, totally about $170,000. With the prospective loss of $50,000 from qRD grants-in-aid, Lift would be looking at putting in between $70,000 and $90,000 to keep the CRC open, “so it’s quite a big hit.”

“Historically, we do run at a deficit,” said Clark.” It’s a hard model to fund – a drop-in program that is open to anyone facing challenges. It’s a difficult thing to find any one funder. It does take a collection of partners.”

Clark said with the qRD contribution, the anticipated deficit for keeping the CRC open is $23,000, and would be more like $73,000 without.

Lift director of programs Kim Markel said some of the changes that will be considered if qRD funding cannot be secured includes changes in the staffing model, reduction in service hours, or changes to the meal program.

“All would have significant impacts to our patrons, staff and broader community,” said Markel. “Our concern is this would have additional pressures on the surrounding community along with the limited community resources.”

Community concerns

Electoral Area C director and board chair Clay Brander asked what steps Lift has in place to alleviate some of the community concerns.

“I don’t know if you had a chance to read through the correspondence we received,” said Brander. “There was one letter that was quite poignant that talks about how a family member used to be able to access the CRC site, but it is now an unsafe space for them. If it’s not a safe place for the marginalized members of the public, it seems like steps should be taken to make it a welcoming place.”

Clark said those stories are concerning to Lift, too.

“We do our best to try to track down who might be feeling unsafe in the CRC to address those things,” said Clark. “There are more people in crisis and the toxic drug supply is leading to more challenges than we would usually expect in a community of our size.

“There definitely are some challenges in the centre and we are doing our best to mitigate them and make it a safe space for everyone. We sometimes make the difficult decision to remove people.”

Electoral Area D director Sandy McCormick, who is also the qRD board representative on the Tourism Powell River board, said many problems occur at night, with glass being broken from smashed crack pipes, drug paraphernalia scattered around, damage to the outside cameras, urination at the front door and defecation in the planter boxes, and a fire was lit near the back door.

Clark said he 100 per cent agreed it was inappropriate. It was a complex problem and more funding is required for more staffing, and Lift will have conversations with partners about what is making a difference, he added.

Brander served notice of motion for the July 5 finance committee meeting to revisit the $50,000 grant-in-aid request for Lift.