Outside, it’s cold and people are feeling some trepidation about the first weeks of 2025. Inside the Our Place Community Centre, spirits are high.

Naomi Nice has returned to sponsor a meal, her donation providing a breakfast of egg and ham sandwiches, hashbrowns, and fresh fruit. It’s her birthday, but she’s the one giving back; a tradition she started years ago.

Naomi first found Our Place when she was booked as a DJ for our Christmas party. She was battling addiction herself, and struggling.

It was the staff and volunteers that she noticed first. Though, she admits she expected anyone working in the sector to be burnt out and dejected.

“Everybody was happy, joyous,” she says.

Just a few months after visiting for the party, Naomi’s addiction had gotten worse, and she had no money to pay bills or eat. She remembered Our Place, and the welcoming and warm environment she had experienced.

“I would come here and eat, get coffee, camaraderie, clothing,” she says as she dishes out steaming eggs.

When she spent more time at the centre, she came to know not only the staff and volunteers, but the other Family Members who rely on Our Place.

“I’m allergic to gluten and dairy, and when I would eat here, people would be so generous,” she explains. “If a meal was a lot of bread, they would say, ‘do you want my meat? Do you want my fruit?’ Everybody made sure that I ate. I learned that the people with the least can be the most generous.”

The journey wasn’t quick for Naomi, and she relied on Our Place meals for three years. She was in and out of housing, at one point living in her car until it died. By the third year, she was beginning to find some stability and support with her addiction until she experienced a relapse that put it all in jeopardy.

Her progress, her health, and the safe and secure housing she had fought so hard to gain could all be lost and she was desperate.

When she came to Our Place that day, she was distraught.

She approached the outreach workers that she had built a relationship with over the years, and they greeted her by name.

“People knew my name and it was like, I mattered, even though I had nothing,” says Naomi.

Thanks to a special fund set up by a group of donors for housing security, the Our Place team was able to provide Naomi with financial assistance to pay her rent that month and in this case, stop homelessness in its tracks.

“I was so embarrassed that I had used all my rent money. I started going to [recovery program] meetings… I never picked up that drug again after that,” says Naomi.

Naomi is now housed, working full-time, and eleven years off alcohol, and almost nine years sober from all substances. Naomi is just one of many Family Members who return to Our Place to provide for others, because of the help they received.

“[Family Members] see me and they think, ‘Where do I know her from?’ Right here. You know me from Our Place.”