It's literally been astronomical. Our rental increases in Calgary are just ridiculous. The rents are going from, say, $1,500 a month with raises anywhere from six hundred dollars to a thousand dollars a month extra.
In the whole year, we've had 38 veterans whom we've actually physically housed in hotels until we can find them another place. That's not always so easy, because if they're paying $1,500 a month here and they're evicted because the landlord has raised the rent $500, you're not going to find another place for $1,500. They just don't exist.
We calculated that one stay for a veteran in a hotel for three months, which is about the average until we get them situated, is about $10,000. On top of that, when they move, they have to have furniture, clothing, food and whatever, and those.... They are just our general people coming to use the food bank. In Edmonton, for example, over 200 veterans access the veterans' food bank every month. Ours is around 100. We have offices in Grande Prairie and Lethbridge, and there are around 50 people in those smaller communities.
It's just everything. We pay people's rent if they can't afford it. We now are subsidizing rents, because it's almost cheaper to subsidize a rent than to remove them and place them in a hotel somewhere. Our numbers over a six-month period literally tripled for the amount of money we're spending on keeping veterans housed, clothed, fed and in their homes.
It's like that everywhere. We have, every day, people from just the community asking us for help because they need food, but we can't because we only service our military veterans.
Blake, it's just sad what's happening to our veteran community.