Every Saturday since the Covid pandemic hit, Imran Rajpoot has driven downtown and delivered food and clothing to homeless folks. Rajpoot owns Dolphin Dry Cleaners, and his line of business means he regularly receives dozens of wearable but unwanted clothes. He’s also learned that many homeless people near him are hungry, and he buys or cooks food for them every week.
Over the past five years, he’s made friends with the folks on the street. He’s learned about their stories. He’s received countless hugs.
Recently, though, the City of Calgary and the Calgary Police have been trying to block his helping hand. They’ve told him that he can’t park his van in front of the Drop-In Center, saying that he’s not allowed to park there and that it’s creating litter.
But the people he serves are in desperate need of help.
“Most people that I serve are heartbroken,” Rajpoot tells TheRockies.Life. He speaks of one nineteen-year-old who has been homeless since he was sixteen. His father abused him when he was a child, so one day, he fled. When this boy was seventeen, Rajpoot asked him, “Why don’t you go home?”
The boy told Rajpoot that it was better to live on the streets than at home, where he’d be beaten up every day.
“They’ve all been abandoned by someone,” Rajpoot says of those who receive his coffee and clothes.
City Halts Aid Efforts
Rajpoot says the City has been attempting to block his efforts for several months. CTV News Calgary reported that in October, the city put up barriers to block him from parking his van in front of the drop-in center.
Two weeks ago, Rajpoot tells TheRockies.Life, the Calgary Police drove by and told him he had to leave. He told him that he would be on his way after distributing all of his food, coffee and clothing. Still, the police came by three more times to tell him to leave.
Rajpoot tried to reason with the police officers. He tried to appeal to their sense of humanity. One man there that day, like so many other homeless people, had no one else to take care of him. But to make matters worse, he didn’t have fingers. Rajpoot pointed this out to the officer, saying that this man needed Rajpoot’s support.
“I know, and I know who he is, too,” the officer replied. Still, he told Rajpoot that he had to leave.
Kindness and Humanity on the Streets
Rajpoot says that he had no grand plan when he started his philanthropic efforts. When he moved to Canada from the UK about 24 years ago, he purchased a dry cleaning business. Part of the deal was that he had to buy the inventory. When he arrived, he discovered that much of the inventory was clothes customers hadn’t reclaimed.
He decided to bring all the clothes downtown and give them to the homeless outside the shelter.
For years after this, he would go downtown occasionally, dropping off clothes when he had them.
When Covid hit, he saw the number of folks without homes in Calgary skyrocket. He also couldn’t stand sitting at home. So he decided that every Saturday, he would bring the homeless clothes.
“In my faith, I am required to help the poor,” he says. “I’m carrying out the instructions of my faith.
Since helping the homeless, he’s discovered they are some of the kindest people he knows.
One Saturday, he says, he served hot samosas. After someone had taken the last one, another man arrived and asked if there were any more.
The man who’d taken the last samosa hadn’t eaten his yet. “Here, you can have mine,” he told this new arrival.
Real Solutions Needed for Homeless
The help Rajpoot is giving is more than just a feel-good mission. He’s also filling a very real gap in the services available to people who don’t have homes. The Calgary Herald reported that in 2023 alone, “the Calgary Drop-In Centre saw an annual increase of 26 percent in those seeking shelter.”
The services available to folks experiencing homelessness have not expanded the necessary 26% since 2023.
Still, this past September, someone from the City of Calgary paid Rajpoot a visit to his dry cleaning business. He stood next to one of the donation bins inside the store and said, “You don’t need to be doing this. The drop-in shelters take really good care of them.”
“He believed what he was saying,” Rajpoot says.
Calgary needs to expand how much help it is giving to those in need, not putting roadblocks in the way of people trying to give out food and clothing.
Rajpoot tells TheRockies.Life that since his philanthropic efforts made the news last week, the police have left him alone.
“Until people in government understand the situation that homeless people are going through, nothing will change,” he says. Until then, he plans to continue his work.
