Vancouver building valued at $13M gifted to support youth with mental health, substance use issues

A generational donation has been gifted to an organization that offers free mental health supports to B.C. youth.

An organization that offers free mental health support and substance use care for youth will be able to expand its services to a new building in downtown Vancouver, thanks to the donation of a multimillion-dollar building from a private foundation.

The Foundry is planning to start offering services this year in the four-storey building that most recently housed an architectural firm, and is nestled between boutiques, restaurants and luxury units in Vancouver’s high-end Yaletown neighbourhood.

The gift by a private foundation to help teens and young people means a move from the Foundry’s current cramped location above an MMA gym where executive director Steve Mathias said they’ve had to turn away youth.

The new window-filled concrete structure allows them to double the size of their clinic space and move in staff from its research and implementation branches.

“What we want to be able to do is really increase our capacity to work with (youth),” Mathias said on Thursday.

“Right now, it is typically about 1,000 to 1,200 unique youth a year. We’d really like to see that grow to 2,000 unique youths a year.”

The Foundry offers free mental health and wellness supports for people aged 12 and 24 in B.C. and runs 19 centres across the province, offering the care of primary doctors, social workers or psychiatrists, along with opioid agonist therapy and even cooking classes or help finding housing.

Mathias said the organization needs about $7 million to complete renovations in the new space and has already raised about $2 million.

He said going from leasing the old location to owning the new building means there will be money available for maintenance and the potential expanded services.

Amanda Horne is a former client of Foundry who works as a peer support worker in the old Granville Street location said the new space means being able to offer more programming to larger groups.

“Some youth can get very, kind of, overwhelmed sometimes in those groups, if they’re large,” she said. “So, now we can have more youth come in and join groups, and it may not get as full with more space.”

The Foundry said in a news release that the donation gives it a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rewrite the future of youth mental health care” in Vancouver, as the building will be transformed into “B.C.’s most comprehensive youth wellness centre.”

The group said the gift from donors who want to be anonymous comes at a “critical moment” when youth mental health challenges are escalating and toxic drug overdoses are the leading cause of death among youth between 10 and 19 in B.C.

BC Assessment shows the latest valuation of the building at 1220 Homer Street at $7.5 million, although the Foundry says the building was bought by the donor last year for $13.25 million.

The donor is quoted in the news release saying that when they first met the Foundry’s team, they were struck by how deeply they care, and how much they know, and that’s when they decided that their support would make a “truly meaningful impact.”

This report by Ashley Joannou and Nono Shen, The Canadian Press, was first published Jan. 8, 2026.