Education, Advocacy, and Support: How Community Bridge Prevents Evictions

Too many Edmontonians face a difficult decision every month — pay bills or pay rent.

This was the reality for Katherine (name changed to protect privacy) — and she almost lost her home. As a single mother of two with a part-time job and extra monthly support coming from Alberta Income Support, she was still falling behind and facing an imminent eviction.

After working with her employer to change her job to full-time, she lost her Alberta Income Support benefits and found herself still needing extra help to ensure she and her two sons wouldn’t be evicted from their home. With the eviction notice in-hand, she connected with our Community Bridge program for help.

The main goal of Community Bridge is to prevent evictions and ensure people at risk don’t experience homelessness. Through financial education, benefits navigation, and direct financial assistance, this program seeks to not only prevent immediate evictions, but also help ensure individuals don’t have to face these challenges again.

“Katherine came to us already taking the initiative to change her part-time work to a full-time job,” says Katrina John-West, Manager of Homelessness Prevention and Housing Support with Bissell Centre, where she oversees the Community Bridge program. “Her Alberta Income Support had ended and having a full-time job still wasn’t enough to help her catch up.”

How Community Bridge Helped Katherine

To ensure Katherine could break from this cycle, the Community Bridge team helped her in three areas to pay off her remaining debt and guarantee her housing stability. The first step was making sure Katherine could receive emergency income benefits from Alberta Income Support.

“What some folks don’t know about Community Bridge is we can act as advocates for people,” explains Katrina. “We can also make references to other sources of financial assistance that folks might not know exist.” In addition to advocating for Katherine’s Alberta Income Support emergency benefits, the Community Bridge team connected her with benefits from the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul. Financial benefits helped, but didn’t cover all her debts — which were collecting interest.

The second approach to helping Katherine came in a one-time, interest-free loan from the Community Bridge program. This lump sum assistance is, on average, paid back within one year of receiving it — even without any timelines or pressure from Community Bridge. “How quickly and frequently folks can pay back this assistance shows us how much we’re helping their financial situations,” says John-West. “It’s setting people up for the best successes possible so they can become empowered with their finances.”

The third type of support Katherine received was a referral to Civida, Edmonton’s largest affordable housing provider. This referral was for additional rent assistance benefits, but many qualifying folks also find new and more affordable homes with Civida — further breaking the cycles faced by countless Edmontonians.

Avoiding Eviction, Controlling Finances, and Finding Stability

Today, Katherine remains in her home with her two sons, now both teenagers and preparing for adulthood. She’s regained control of her finances, cleared out all her debts and arrears, and continues to work full-time while maintaining her household.

“Katherine is a really special success story,” says Katrina. “Many times, we’re meeting people who are in the middle of being evicted or aren’t able to work. Katherine was doing everything right and the odds were still stacked against her. Everything she needed was within reach — she just wasn’t sure where to look. I’m so proud that the team could point her in the best direction for her and her family.”

Thanks to support from ENMAX, the Community Bridge team can continue connecting with folks at risk and prevent them from being evicted and facing homelessness. “We believe in empowering our communities and helping more people access the essentials for a healthy, thriving life,” says Krista Moroz, Manager, Community Partnerships & External Relations at ENMAX. “By supporting Bissell’s Community Bridge Program, we’re not just helping individuals and families in crisis — we’re also investing in the long-term strength of our community and a brighter future for all Edmontonians.”

From January to October 2024, we helped 464 individuals, just like Katherine, facing immediate evictions from their homes. Best of all, 96% of the people we help through Community Bridge stay in their homes. We can’t thank organizations like ENMAX enough for their support — without our generous funders, we wouldn’t be able to offer the crucial help that’s needed throughout our city.

The Cookies that brought Smiles to everyone

Every year, Tim Horton’s holds its Smile Cookie fundraiser, where each local franchise owner can pick a charity in their community that the proceeds from cookie sales will support. It’s a great way to help raise money for great causes directly in our communities!

This year, a group of Edmonton franchise owners decided to try something different. The group agreed to pool their efforts to make a larger collective impact – ultimately choosing Bissell Centre as their charity of choice.

And just like that, this quickly became one of the largest fundraising campaigns we’ve held – raising more than $400,000 in a single week.

Bissell’s Child and Family Supports

Funds from this spring’s Smile Cookie campaign all went to support our Child and Family Supports Program. Last year, we helped more than 1,600 families find their way out of poverty and emergency situations. These programs make a massive impact that people in Edmonton don’t often see.

“It’s things like connections to free pre-natal care, parental supports, or free access to emergency essentials like diapers and formula,” says Jonathan Mackereth, Development Officer with Bissell Centre.

Mackereth explains that Bissell has run a childcare for more than 50 years, serving families in the downtown core. The centre is fully staffed by Early Childhood Education professionals, providing Early Childhood Development for short- and long-term – serving childcare from newborns to six years old.

“There’s are enough challenges finding quality childcare – finances shouldn’t be one of them,” says Mackereth “Lots of parents even drop-off their kids to access other programs like our Employment Services or Financial Empowerment workshops, making it an essential part of our approach to ending poverty.”

Supporting and Celebrating Together

Learning that 147 Tim’s locations all came together to support Bissell Centre, “caught us a little off guard,” Jonathan jokes. “We knew right away opportunities like this don’t come often. We pooled resources into making sure folks knew that buying a cookie would help a child.”

Team members from Bissell Centre could be found at a few different locations around the city during this campaign. Whether it was celebrating with giant cookie cut-outs by the drive-thru, or putting on hair nets and decorating cookies, the teams stepped up to make the week unforgettable.

By the end of the campaign, more than 300,000 cookies were sold – raising more than $464,000! People didn’t hesitate to add a smile cookie to their regular double-double orders – with some businesses and schools pre-ordering up to 1,500 cookies at a time.

“On the first day, we had a manager come out to see us,” Jonathan recalls. “She said in the first two hours of the morning rush, they sold more than a quarter of the cookies they sold for the entire campaign last year.”

We can’t thank the Edmonton Tim’s franchisees enough for all the support they’ve given us. This will directly impact families and children experiencing houselessness and poverty in Edmonton. Thank you for helping us make Edmonton a little bit more of an equitable place to call home.