Boyle Street Community Services’ plans for new Edmonton location facing opposition
Global News
In December 2021, Boyle Street Community Services announced its plans to move.
Renovation work on a building that will become the new home for an organization that works with impoverished and homeless Edmontonians is soon set to begin, but Boyle Street Community Services’ plan to move is being met with opposition from some people.
“Their current location is surrounded by vacant lots,” Alice Kos, a McCauley resident, told Global News on Monday. “Where they are proposing to move, they will be surrounded by children and independent businesses.
“To me, that makes a really big difference.”
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Kos is among a number of people — including other McCauley residents, the chair of the Chinatown and Area Business Association and a representative of the Ukrainian National Federation in Edmonton — who signed their names to a news release raising concerns about Boyle Street’s plan to move to its new location in the fall of 2023. Kos and a number of other people who put their names on the news release are also parents of children who attend Victoria School of the Arts, which is just one block away from Boyle Street’s future home.
The news release, which was also sent to city councillors, notes that many of the people Boyle Street works with are grappling with mental illness, substance abuse issues and behaviour issues.
“BSCS provides essential services to vulnerable people,” the news release reads. “McCauley is renowned for its inclusiveness and compassion towards vulnerable individuals. But it is beyond McCauley’s capacity to host any additional social agencies.
“McCauley cannot accommodate Edmonton’s largest day shelter, particularly within one block of the city’s largest K to 12 school.”
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