Established in 1967 as a soup kitchen, today Our Place has a mission to “offer Greater Victoria’s most vulnerable citizens a place to call their own, where we live, share and grow together”. Our Place serves as a safe space for the vulnerable members of Victoria, B.C. to eat, shower, and receive clothing. The charity operates a 50-bed Extreme Weather Response shelter in downtown Victoria. The building also has 45 transitional housing units, 2 of which are dedicated to short-term housing for people waiting for a spot in a detoxification or rehabilitation program. 

Covid-19 response: 

Our Place operates over 60 programs in education, health and wellness, housing, meals, drop-in and outreach services. In F2019, Our Place provided 14,508 hot showers, 375 haircuts, and 228 footbaths through its health and wellness programs. In addition, the shelter provided 968 medical referrals and 72 detox and treatment referrals. Our Place’s meal programs served 422,862 meals and 467,600 snacks in F2019. Outreach and drop-in services include a mail and messaging centre for over 400 clients without a fixed address. In F2019, Our Place provided 1,995 one-on-one sessions with outreach workers, resulting in 631 housing advocacy referrals, 372 employment referrals, 127 legal referrals, and 322 financial support grants. 

Our Place is a medium-sized charity with $3.9m in donations in F2019. The shelter received an additional $5.2m in government funding and $271k in rent payments from tenants in Our Place’s transitional housing program. Administrative costs are 11% of revenues and fundraising costs are 15% of donations. For every $1 donated, 74 cents go towards Our Place’s programs. This is within Charity Intelligence’s reasonable range for overhead spending. Our Place has funding reserves of $9.0m which can cover 1.2 years of program costs. 

This report is an update that has been sent to Our Place Society for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming. 

Updated on August 1, 2019 by Caroline McKenna.