I'm anal about numbers. I have a finance background, so I pay attention to the numbers.
To give you some scope very quickly, our plan here at Siloam before COVID hit, and even while it exists, is that we're opening.... Right outside my building right now, I could show you a new building expansion. It's a paradox, where it's sited, because we're going to have space available for all the services I've described to you in the coming months. We'd be opening at the end of May, had COVID not come upon us. I say that it's a paradox. We're grateful for the space, but it also tells you the need. We need the room because the needs continue to expand, and COVID is going to put more pressure on that. We're going to have more beds in addition to the 110 we have right now.
We responded to an RFP recently. We've been awarded, based on the need, an increased number of supportive recovery beds for people coming out of addiction recovery. We have room in our current building after we make the move, so we're paying attention to that and we're expanding on our social enterprise. With all those things, given that we expect donor fallout, we're going to need resources, and I would love to work with government to show a business case to say, “Look, here is what we need. Hold us accountable and here are the outputs you can expect.”
You made a comment about the dignity and self-esteem of people. By investing in people who have been down and out, with hardship leading to homelessness, I can tell you first-hand that people want to work. They want to be trained or retrained so that they can get back into their own place and back into the job market. We have stories and experiences. When people come through the front door of Siloam, they will come back and share their experience because they came out ahead when they came out the other door. I trust it's the same for some of the organizations that are on the phone today.
The last comment I would make is that as we pay attention to the post-COVID future, the need is going to go up. We anticipate that our donor contributions and other revenue contributions are going to go down, and therein lies the rub. We know that we can work together with the community to expand upon the services, but we're going to need your help. We're going to need the help of government, and in return for that, I know we can provide you with some comfort in terms of the metrics to say, “Here is how many people are going back into housing; here is how many people are going back to work as a result of job training; here is how many people have participated in health care and are being taken care of for whatever illness they might have.”
We don't want to be irresponsible when we say this, because we're dealing with it with all hands on deck today, but with my leadership team, we're saying, “Okay, when we come out of this—and we are going to come out of this collectively, as a nation—here are going to be some of the challenges.” I hope we can have another opportunity to talk about things like that, and I hope it's in the short term rather than the long term.
I trust that answers your question. I could really go on, but thank you for the opportunity.