It’s an emergency scenario for the Cairn Housing Society as funding becomes an increasing problem for the low-income housing organization.
Carrie Bartsch, Executive Director for the Cairn Housing Society describes the issue as a “crisis” situation and appeared as a delegation in Grande Prairie City Council’s committee meetings on March 19th with a $30,000 emergency funding request to support the organization’s operation, which she says is not even enough to meet status quo.
“We’re struggling to find funding to keep this going and without this, we’re going to have a lot of people falling through the cracks,” she says. “The $30,000 is to limp us along until we can get other funding.”
The facility operates as an 84-unit apartment building with support services available to its 150 residents and Bartsch says it’s the residents who will be hit the hardest if new funding does not come along soon.
“People live here, and we help them with every aspect of their life,” she says. “Having the families in there really brings a sense of accountability to folks that are living there.”
The Housing Society provides numerous support systems to its residents including educational classes, mental health support groups, financial literacy classes, and consistent food security, but Bartsch says without proper funding, the organization will simply be unable to support the staffing and operations costs that come with those services.
“We need money to keep our staff going,” she says. “We can apply to get a new pot, we can apply to get a board room table, but who’s paying for those staff to keep going, and as it is, I volunteer most of my time as the Executive Director, and Wendy volunteers her time as our bookkeeper, and without that, we’re going to fold and the vulnerable people, the ones who haven’t experienced homelessness or re-enter into homelessness are going to be the ones that hurt.”
According to Bartsch, the Cairn Housing Society has applied for numerous funding options from the province, and after being denied FCSS funding and having to wait for the mandatory three-year cycle to reapply, the organization has run out of options.
“We’ve received absolutely zero funding other than private donations, we’re actually using bottle money and bottle collection right now to buy food for our food security program,” she says. “We have applied to FCSS, and they told us that our funding for this year is gone, we applied for the RFP for prevention and diversion because we ticked all the boxes, we provide holistic wraparound services, but they said we didn’t qualify because we’re only supposed to pick one service, and you have to apply for a new RFP for every service.”
As a result of their request, Grande Prairie City Council’s Public and Protective Services Committee chose to bring the funding discussion to the council’s next Monday meeting at a figure of $16,000 instead of the requested $30,000.
Deputy Mayor Gladys Blackmore says she feels council “does not do enough” to support Grande Prairie residents who are at risk of homelessness; however, she says she does not think the full $16,000 proposal will be approved on Monday.
“None of us really like it when we see a request coming forward for emergency funding because we sort of feel like we should be doing a better job, but I do believe this will receive some positive acceptance,” she says. “The people who are at risk of homelessness, I feel that we do not do enough to support, so I’m happy to see this come, unfortunately it’s not going to be for the full amount I don’t think.”
Residents who wish to support the Cairn Housing Society are asked to consider bottle and food donations, and volunteer opportunities.