St. John's Receives Help for Affordable Housing from Cmhc

In the community of St. John's, having 68 units of affordable housing has huge impact. 68 people who have a safe and affordable place to live. Stella Burry community services is an average ministry of the United Church of Canada. We run several residential treatment facilities, employment programs and housing problems. We were working from Emmanuel House, which is a residential treatment facility, and our residents were coming back to the program, telling us that when I leave this program, there's nowhere for me to live in the community. And then we knew that we had to create safe, affordable housing. Carew Lodge actually came about as a surprise. Our director was out walking in the neighbourhood on a lunch break and saw the building for sale, and when she saw the sign on it, she came back and said "we have to go look at this building, this could be our first foray into Affordable Housing." Our housing programs would not have been possible without the help of Canada Mortgage and Housing. Their assistance has been incredible to Stella Burry. Our Carew Lodge project was our first partnership with Canada Mortgage and Housing. We applied for a PDF, Proposal Development Funding, to look at is this project feasible for Stella Burry? We also received funding from Newfoundland, Labrador Housing Rental Rehabilitation Assistance, which is referred to as RRAP funding, for this project as well. Those two funding sources were able to help us get the project started and to look at our preliminary designs, environmental concerns, and really get the project moving. Carew Lodge has 14 units, those are all bachelor style apartments. We work with our tenants at Carew Lodge to develop what the building model would look like. We've just recently been awarded Seed Funding to expand on our Carew Lodge, which will include ten 1-bedroom apartments. Our tenants are all people who have been participating in one of our employment programs, in one of our residential programs, and again their story is the same. "There is nowhere that is safe and affordable for me to live in the community". I've suffered from mental illness for years and the direction that I was going in before was really, really negative. I wasn't really able to take care of myself, and now I'm able to do that in a clean environment, secure building. In 1999, with Carew Lodge, we started with 14 units of Affordable Housing, by the end of 2010 with the expansion of Carew Lodge and the 10 units that we will add, we'll have over 68 units of Affordable Housing owned by Stella Burry Community Services. There is a huge impact on the community of St. John's. Having a safe and affordable home is the first step to going to school, going to work, getting your children back. Those are all things that are critical to having a home. For a year and a half, I slept on an air mattress, so the first night I slept in an actual bed, it felt good, and the next morning when I got up, I felt good. Overall my mood was good-it just made me feel really good. I've made it my home.