| Victory Outreach Centre, a church that ministers to street people in Victoria Park, may be homeless as of this August due to Stampede expansion.
Pastor Don Delaney says the church has been actively searching for a new location in the downtown core for more than a year and has raised $600,000 for a new building. However, the organization still hasn’t found a place to relocate to.
The Calgary Exhibition and Stampede is moving forward with construction of a new casino and an expanded Roundup Centre this year and plans to either bulldoze or move the building that currently houses the Victory Outreach Centre at 13th Avenue and Olympic Way S.E.
Victory Outreach Centre offers a housing program, clothing bank and emergency food bank, as well as bible study classes, a monthly chili night and a Sunday church service for homeless Calgarians. At one point, Victory Outreach Centre had seven houses in Victoria Park it could rent to homeless people, but that’s now down to two because of Stampede expansion. Delaney says his organization helps about 500 people per month through its various services.
"We don’t really want to leave the downtown. We’ve been here 13 years and a lot of the people that live in the downtown core are going to stay in the downtown core, so if we… have no presence down here, that means we would lose our contact with them," he says. "We’ve got to be walking distance and we really feel that’s important, so that’s why we’re looking for another downtown location in the inner city."
Delaney is still confident they’ll find another location, but says if the organization doesn’t, it will be "devastating" for the people they serve.
"They do have landmarks in their life that give them comfort, give them hope and… for a lot of them, this is one of them," he says.
Delaney says the city needs to work on a strategy to ensure that organizations that help the homeless can stay in the downtown area while redevelopment increases.
"The problem with this city is it’s so prosperous, every square foot is worth money and it becomes expensive to help the poor, but it becomes very unhealthy for society if we don’t help the poor," he says. "So no matter how expensive it is, we need to leave corners for the poor."
Delaney calls downtown and inner-city Calgary the "homeless backyard" and says people shouldn’t just be pushed out to make way for new office buildings and condos.
Lindsay Galloway, spokesperson for the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, says his organization has been working with Victory Outreach Centre to find a new location.
"We’ve had conversations (with Victory Outreach Centre) that go back to 1998 and (Delaney) knows this has been coming. We’re keen to continue to work with him to relocate," says Galloway.
However, he adds that the Stampede expansion, which has been planned for years, will proceed on schedule.
Delaney says at this point he’s currently "pretty anxious."
"But we trust that God’s going to find us something. I wouldn’t be a man of faith if I didn’t." |
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