Surrey charity feeding hundreds of people Thanksgiving meals amid rise in homelessness

The Surrey Urban Mission is providing a turkey dinner Monday evening to its over 200 guests experiencing homelessness on Thanksgiving.

Janet Brown, the charity’s director of communications, says its four shelters around Surrey provide three meals per day to guests, but Monday’s fare features all the trappings, including turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie.

“It is such an honour and privilege to be able to serve our guests and provide them with a little bit of kindness and joyfulness and happiness, especially at this time of year, especially on Thanksgiving Day,” said Brown.

“We also have volunteers coming in to help serve the meals, so it’s not like a cafeteria style. Our guests will be sitting down. And they will be served a hot meal.”

Brown says homelessness is becoming a bigger problem in the area, and Surrey Urban Mission is at capacity every night.

“It’s unfortunate and extremely sad when we have to turn people away at our front doors,” Brown explained.

“Right now in Surrey, there are roughly 1,200 people who are homeless. That was a 65 per cent increase over the previous homeless count in the year 2020. So yes, homelessness is increasing not only in the city of Surrey, but also across Metro Vancouver, across our province and across our country as well.”

With roughly 1,000 new people moving to Surrey every month, she says the region, Surrey, and the Whalley area desperately need more housing.

“When people come in off the streets and they’re fed, and they have a roof over their head, and they have opportunities to get into detox and other programs — that’s when people start to feel like they have hope for their future.”

Brown says the annual Thanksgiving meal was once open to the entire community in need. But, with limited funding, that offer to non-guests has been reduced to a bag meal program served from a window at just one of the shelters, and made possible by donors.

Surrey Urban Mission is 97 per cent funded by BC Housing, she explained, with the City of Surrey providing “significant support,” and the rest is covered by donors.

Brown says the charity is incredibly grateful to all its supporters, who she says are doing their best amid challenging financial times.

“But sometimes we need more than that. We need all partners to come together. We need all partners to come together and hopefully provide more shelter space, more housing for the city of Surrey.”

—With files from Raynaldo Suarez