Volunteer Centre of Charlotte County on Housing, Homelessness, and Funding

Donna Linton has been working as the Volunteer Center of Charlotte County Coordinator since 1993. In that time she and her team of volunteers have helped countless struggling families via the food bank that operates out of the centre. The centre also provides clothing, tax assistance, housing assistance, and counselling to all who walk through her door. 

Though it provides crucial and life saving aid to many residents of Charlotte County, often supplementing or outright replacing the role of the various welfare programs in New Brunswick, the organization is almost entirely funded by charitable donations. 

Near the end of December, a man came to the center looking for help. He had no place to live, and no means to solve that problem. Rural areas, like Charlotte County, often don’t have shelters for the homeless. For a week the center provided him with temporary shelter while arranging a more long term solution. Without the work of Linton and her colleagues that man would have slept outside in the middle of a Canadian winter risking death or serious harm. 

Three years ago, the Liberal government of New Brunswick reduced the way funding is distributed to food banks across the province, while moving the source of that funding from the Department of Social Development to the Department of Health. The Volunteer Center used to receive $30,000 per year from Social Development for its food bank. They now receive $15,000 per year, with a further $15,000 available as a grant for “innovative programs”. 

Each year the centre fills out an application for this grant, and each year the innovation must be a new idea. Linton says, “I’m not sure that we will be able to figure something out this year. Last year we used it to buy fresh vegetables, which is something that we do every year anyway, but we can’t use that again.”