$1 million to thousands in overdraft in months: Court documents show Lighthouse financial downfall

Court documents filed at the Court of King's Bench show how quickly the finances of Lighthouse Supported Living Inc. collapsed in a matter of months.

Affinity Credit Union, the non-profit's main creditor, filed a brief of law at the courthouse, which shows the loss of nearly $1 million in cash assets over the past year.

"How did we go from having $1 million cashflow to going into the negative?" board member Adeel Salman said Friday.

The Lighthouse Supported Living Inc. entered full control of a court-appointed receiver following an application from Affinity Credit Union on Thursday. Accounting firm MNP will now have expanded powers to sell off any and all Lighthouse property to pay off its debts.

According to court documents, Affinity was able to piece together the Lighthouse's finances using a few financial statements between 2020 and 2022, though plenty of detailed financial statements remain unaccounted for.

The statements show the Lighthouse had more than $1 million cash at the end of 2020 and $807,000 at the end of March last year.

By July 2022, a little more than $353,000 in cash remained as the province pulled funding and donations dried up when internal struggles  at the Lighthouse were made public last summer.

"There are just glaring gaps that for some odd reason went unnoticed," Salman said.

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From July 2022 to January 2023, the chequing account the Lighthouse regularly used dwindled into the red, according to an affidavit filed at the Court of King's Bench.

"(Affinity Credit Union) has serious concerns about the management and financial affairs of the Lighthouse," the affidavit Meagan Goodwin, Affinity's collections and overdraft team lead, said.

Documents show the chequing account had a high balance of $500,488.27 and a low balance of $268,322.87 in April 2022. Nine months later, the high balance was $40,502.69 with a low balance of $255,596.40 in overdraft.

The Lighthouse owes approximately $2.6 million to Affinity, about $561,000 to CRA for unpaid staff deductions, and another $578,000 to other creditors, according to court records.

Even with the grim circumstances facing the non-profit, Salman feels there's a way forward for the group to operate and provide some level of programming and housing for the roughly 140 people who live at its two downtown towers.

"Hopefully we all can still protect the Lighthouse as an organization and as a corporation," he said. " And in whatever form it comes out, we can still continue to do the good work."