A local Good Samaritan and business owner has helped achieve a fundraising goal to expand SOLID Outreach’s capacity at the Dowler Place transitional housing facility.
The Victoria Housing Crowdfund was originally launched in February 2025 by Mylan Clairmont, owner of Clairmont Conditioning, to raise $300,000 to build a brand new transitional housing facility, but decided to pivot to helping out SOLID.
Clairmont says that this pivot came as a result of conversations he had with community members and learning about SOLID’s funding needs.
Dowler Place opened early in 2025, around the same time as Clairmont began his endeavour of fundraising.
The SOLID-run site at 2155 Dowler began operating as a transitional care access hub with 25 beds to start. The site is, and always has been a dry site meant to help people coming out of recovery programs find permanent housing and work.
After opening in January of last year, they had yet to renovate the upper floor of the building, and needed funding to get the space finished. This would allow them to help more people navigate the difficult journey that follows recovery.
“The renovation allows for six additional spaces for individuals who have already been with us for several months on their healing journey to live semi-independently while we work with them in securing and setting up their own longer-term housing situations,” said Mark Willson, director of SOLID.
He added that Clairmont’s fundraising work through this renovation was invaluable in bringing together local businesses and community members who wanted to see effective compassionate responses to homelessness in Victoria.
“His work on this showed something really valuable, which is that many people want to see responses to homelessness that actually help people, and many are frustrated by the lack of provincial responses that reach the people we see every day who need support the most,” Willson told Victoria Buzz.
“We too often see and hear more negative responses to visible poverty and suffering, but projects like this show that there’s actually a lot more people who want to see people getting the help they need.”
Clairmont says that it is a great feeling to have been able to facilitate the fundraiser that garnered SOLID over $100,000.
He added that the fundraiser ended up teaching him a lot about himself, and the community at large in Victoria.
Having worked with at-risk youth before, he has seen what happens when people get left behind by a system that doesn’t work for them.
“There are infinite possibilities for how people might end up living on the street and painting them as monolith in terms of the supports they need doesn’t move us in the right direction,” said Clairmont.
He says that one specific heartwarming instance that took place over the last year happened at a garage sale of donated items when a stranger asked him what he was raising money for.
“When we said it was for SOLID he said that ‘he’s been off the hard stuff for over 10 years thanks [to] SOLID,’ but said he didn’t have any money on him,” Clairmont explained.
“He walked away and an hour later came back with a fist full of quarters to donate [all] that he had gotten from busking.”
Clairmont added that there were countless times where people walking by a booth or table he was working heard SOLID mentioned and immediately wanted to talk.
“The number of people who told us how much they have benefitted from or enjoyed working alongside the folks at SOLID was surprising and I think an indicator of an organization that is truly rooted in community.”
Though the transitional housing facility at 2155 Dowler Place was met at first with contempt by some members of the surrounding community, they have helped numerous people get clean, get jobs and get housing.
