Gateway Church makes $50,000 in support of Vision SoHo Alliance

Gateway Church makes $50,000 gift in support of Vision SoHo Alliance

From left to right: Gateway Church Chairman Jeff Holmes & Lead Pastor Rick Boyes, LCF President & CEO Martha Powell & Vice-President Vijay Venkatesan

Beginning life as the Glad Tidings Assembly on Wonderland Rd., Gateway Church has become one of the largest congregations in the city over the past 15 years since it’s move to 890 Sarnia Rd., and is deeply committed to ensuring both the spiritual and physical well-being of its members. But this sense of responsibility is not limited by the walls of their church – Gateway cares deeply for the well-being of the broader London community.

“Our church greatly values caring for our city,” says Pastor Rick Boyes, Lead Pastor at Gateway Church for 23 years. “We’re always looking for new initiatives, new ways to make an impact in London.”

Seeing the dire need for affordable housing in London and having their own housing project sidelined by the COVID-19 pandemic, Gateway Church did not want to delay action any further. This strong sense of responsibility for their city is what spurred the Church to contribute $50,000 in support of the Vision SoHo Alliance’s redevelopment of the Old Victoria Hospital Lands.

“COVID-19 obviously threw a huge wrench into our plans, and that wrench caused us to pause and try to figure out what we could do now that would be affordable for us,” says Rick. “We had learned a lot about what affordable housing should look like through our own research process – which is what made us that much more interested in the work LCF was doing.”

Gateway Church’s generous gift will go a long way to ensuring the success of the redevelopment going forward.

“We're so grateful to Gateway Church for making the very first donation to the Vision SoHo Fund,” says Martha Powell, President & CEO, London Community Foundation. “We hope it will inspire others to come forward to support the redevelopment project and help build some homes that folks in our community can afford.”

Representing a one-of-a-kind partnership of non-profit affordable housing developers, the Vision SoHo Alliance has united its members under a common banner to address a pressing issue, together.

“What drew us to the Vision SoHo Alliance over all the other initiatives was the fact that it is a gathering of various projects and entities that are all working together,” says Rick. “Unity is something that we highly value as a church, and we'd love to see that value encouraged more in our city.”

And the new SoHo development’s use of a mixed-income affordable housing model is not just a result of unity, it will foster a sense of unity among tenants and neighbours – a belonging that isn’t conditional on income or background.

“When I look at the SoHo project, I think to myself ‘I'd like to live there’, and that just makes me so excited,” says Rick. “Affordable housing needs to maintain the dignity of it’s tenants – that’s something we feel really strongly about. And the SoHo project looks like it will create a community folks will be proud to be a part of.”

To learn more about the redevelopment of the Old Victoria Hospital Lands or how you can support the Vision SoHo Alliance, visit visionsoho.ca.