A single flower goes a long way
It might sound like fiction, but it is thanks to a Lion’s Club Mother’s Day carnation sale in 1947 that Hopehill has been able to provide affordable housing and community for mature adults for more than 65 years.
Hopehill was founded under the name Beulah Garden Homes as a not-for-profit in 1951, having reorganized from the Senior Citizens’ Homes Association Limited (SCHA). The SCHA began as a small group of people concerned about housing options for pensioners and, with the proceeds from that first Mother’s Day flower sale, they purchased a city block in Vancouver with the intention of serving seniors in need of low-cost housing. By 1950, the SCHA had built four new duplexes on that city block and brought eight wartime duplexes by barge from Washington to Vancouver, officially establishing Beulah Garden Homes, now Hopehill, as a permanent feature of the East Vancouver community.