Hope for the challenged

Two of the directors on the board of the Sunshine Coast Association for Community Living (SCA) provide the kind of unique insight that can’t be found anywhere else.

The pair are participants in the British Columbia-based, non-profit organization, which helps people with mental and physical disabilities. Their role is to tell president Debbie Mealia and the rest of the association’s board what all of their colleagues have been up to. That includes reporting on how various activities, such as baseball games, have gone.

“Having them on the board definitely personalizes our folks, and it always humanizes everything,” says Mealia, a financial advisor with Investors Group Inc.’s North Vancouver office. “Their perspective is one that we really value.”

Value is one thing the SCA is always looking for, particularly when the provincial government is continually looking to cut costs in search of a balanced budget.

Mealia has been an SCA board member for nine years and president for the past six years. Before she joined the board, the SCA was a group client of hers at Investors Group.

“I noticed [that] each year,” says Mealia, “they were receiving less and less funding from government.”

The SCA’s participants have a range of physical and mental disabilities. They have two main challenges: they need meaningful work and affordable housing. With an average monthly income of about $1,000, Mealia says, the SCA participants who were able to live independently were constantly looking for new housing because their rent was going up continuously.

The SCA previously had not considered entrepreneurial opportunities. Instead, the association made repeated requests to the provincial government for more money and was usually disappointed when it didn’t materialize. Enter Mealia and her business background.

Eight years ago, and with $5,000 to spend, she and the SCA board approached the owner of a local commercial property, which had been appraised at $500,000, and asked if he would consider selling it to the SCA.

Their offer was to pay $5,000 down, with six months to change the property’s zoning to residential and figure out how to get the rest of the money.

The property’s owner subsequently agreed to donate $100,000 of the property’s value to the SCA, leaving the charity with a $400,000 question.

The answer was found through a partnership with local business people. Now, the SCA owns a 24-unit condo building, including four units that are mortgage-free.

Since then, the SCA has purchased another commercial property that has a women’s clothing store and a grocery store on the main floor, as well as four apartments on the second floor. All six units provide rental income.

The SCA also is in the process of buying more land, together with a number of partners, where a microbrewery and an organic farm will be.

“We want everything to be a stand-alone, viable business,” Mealia says. “It has to be something that works. Over time, we’ve shifted from an attitude of being victims of government cutbacks to creating separate income streams.”

The SCA still depends on the government for more than 90% of its funding. But the positive vibrations from the growing sense of financial independence are infectious.

“Instead of feeling beaten up and discouraged from not getting what we want from the government,” Mealia says, “we’re excited about the possibilities of these projects. They inspire us to try something new. We’re not sure where it’s leading, but it feels way better than hoping the government will treat people with disabilities differently.

“We’re not,” she continues, “going to let what we get from the government define how we provide services to people with disabilities in our community. We’re going to create our own opportunities.”