Non-profit that runs Nanaimo, B.C., soup kitchen locked out by landlord
Landlord says lease terminated due to 'ongoing and significant breaches'
The charity that runs a Nanaimo, B.C., community soup kitchen has been locked out by its landlord over rent arrears — despite it having receipts it says shows the rent has been paid.
However, the landlord said Tuesday in a statement that the soup kitchen's lease had been terminated over "ongoing and significant breaches."
The Stone Soup kitchen, which is run by the Wisteria Community Association in the Vancouver Island city, is located on the city's Fitzwilliam Street in the Old Quarter and says it serves almost 200 people.
The operator of the soup kitchen says at least $50,000 worth of food and materials were locked away by its property management company, NAI Commercial, on Oct. 18, and it's scrambling to set up alternatives as the weather gets colder.
Wisteria said it was just a week away from opening up its new dining room, which would allow those on the streets a place to warm up overnight — something it said it was told to do by NAI as a requirement to continue operating. Now, those plans are in jeopardy after it was told it hadn't paid rent on the property on time.
Wisteria showed CBC News receipts that indicated the non-profit had paid rent until Nov. 1.
"How are we supposed to feed the homeless when our facilities are suddenly locked and we can't even access the food that we had there?" said John Boyes, Wisteria's vice-president.
Boyes said the property had previously been managed by a different company, but NAI came into the picture a year-and-a-half ago — and things have been "chaotic" since then..
Landlord says lease terminated over 'significant' breaches
In a statement sent after this story was published, the landlord said it recognized the essential work that organizations like Wisteria do and said the decision to shut the kitchen was not made lightly.
The statement said the lease termination was made due to "ongoing and significant breaches," including the rent arrears, "performing unauthorized tenant improvements that created a substantial fire and safety risk" and a builder's lien being placed on the property.
"Upon vacating the premises, immediate steps were taken to ensure that Wisteria could retrieve perishable food items and materials critical to their operations," the statement read. "Efforts to co-ordinate the removal of fixtures and remaining goods are ongoing."
Wisteria president Tanya Hiltz told CBC News on Tuesday that a builder's lien had been put in place on the property — something she said the association only learned of after being locked out.
She said the association immediately paid off the lien
'Gong show'
Doug Hiltz, a Wisteria director and Tanya Hiltz's husband, says the charity's founders started serving food out of their backyards and cupboards many years ago before they were formally able to launch the soup kitchen in December 2022.
He says that Stone Soup's kitchen took more than $100,000 in community donations to set up, with granite donated from a local company.
"What really upsets me about this whole gong show is how they had the audacity to shut down the only soup kitchen in Nanaimo right before Christmas when people need the place to go the most," he said.
"A lot of these people are on the street. They don't have any family, so that's their family now, is all the people on the street."
Now, Wisteria faces problems getting volunteers together without a physical location and a schedule to stick to.
The MGM Restaurant, which is located a little over a kilometre away, has stepped in to allow the charity to run some nightly soup and sandwich mealtime services from its van.
Wisteria says it's still aiming to do a Boxing Day meal service for Nanaimo's unhoused population as the non-profit searches for a new permanent location.
"We will not go back into that same kitchen. We will not even deal with that agency again because ... if they locked us out once, there's no guarantee they're not going to come in and do it again," Hiltz said.
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