2022-23 Budget and Operations Report is available
Welcome!
Salsbury Community Society operates affordable housing communities seeking to be a sign that love and community are possible between all people. We nurture and tend intentional communities to create spaces of belonging for people from varied backgrounds of life.
About Co:Here
Salsbury Community Society operates Co:Here - a 26 unit apartment building where people work hard to be great neighbours.
We share our time with each other through weekly meals, looking after the gardens, caring for common spaces, and lots of just enjoying life. We desire to have a diverse community that offers affordable housing with supports for people from widely varied backgrounds and the possibility for belonging, friendship, trust and love through the spaces and community life within.
Our Story
1996 - Present
Members of Grandview Church noticed that all was not well with their neighbours - with poverty, homelessness, racism, isolation and loneliness. A dream started - to accompany these neighbours in a shared life of mutual friendship
1996
1997
Community meals started around kitchen tables and we dreamt of creating homes where we could live together and belong. It wasn't that only our neighbours needed this...we all needed this.
Residents moved into the Co:Here Building operated by SCS
2018
Construction of the Co:Here Building began
2016
2013
Co:Here Foundation is formed, the church gifts the parking lot to the Foundation and planning of Co:Here continues. Fundraising campaign begins with the goal to raise all the capital funds before construction.
Salsbury Community Society was incorporated. After an original seed idea of moving into a building on Napier Street fell through, SCS was inspired by the idea of 'cluster housing'. Kinbrace and SCS existed and operated together from the start and was born out of the same dream of welcome and caring for our neighbours. A house on Venables was purchased for Kinbrace and SCS went on to purchase/acquire 3 more houses in the neighbourhood.
1998
1999
SCS grows deeper into its 'housing' work, and Kinbrace, JustWork, and REED (all initiatives that came out of SCS) begin to become separate non-profits. Nebo House (polka dot house) and Imayoshi (the ranch) become the first houses operated by SCS
By now SCS is operating 3 houses and the dream of building a housing community on the Church's parking lot has begun (Co:Here). SCS is also the 'umbrella organization' or affiliate for 5 other non-profit initiatives - all grown out of Grandview. These intiatives include: Kinbrace, REED, JustWork, Stillpointe,
and Crossroads.
2009
2002
Emmaus House
(Gravely St.) is opened to families, singles and people in crisis and is the 3rd neighbourhood house operated by SCS
2010
Gentrification continued to move through the neighbourhood and more people needed housing - Salsbury was compelled to think bigger than just a few houses.
2011
Neighbourhood advisory committee begins for the parking lot project (Co:Here) and we present our project for rezoning at a public hearing to councillors at City Hall. City Council unanimously approved our re-zoning application, moving the project from a dream and a vision one big step closer to reality.
2012
Kinbrace and REED started operating as a separate non-profit