Kelowna searching for better ways to sell supportive housing to its citizens

KELOWNA – After struggling through five mostly fractious efforts to house the homeless in Kelowna, city council is being asked to draft a strategy so residents won’t fight so hard against them.

“An unprecedented number of new supportive housing units will be introduced in our community over the next two years,” Darren Caul, the city’s newly hired community safety director wrote in a report that will be going to city council Monday, July 29.

While Hearthstone and Heath House opened in October and January, new projects on Agassiz, McIntosh and McCurdy roads are planned to open within the next two years.

Called a Community Integration Model, the idea is to work with B.C. Housing and other partners to find ways, first of all, to get the city as a whole to accept the value of supportive housing, Caul's predecessor Lance Kayfish told iNFOnews.ca. Then it’s important to get neighbourhood buy-in when specific projects come forward and try to have those fit seamlessly in their neighbourhoods.

This process is not about determining where they go but rather what types of housing are needed and what support systems have to go along with them, Kayfish said. Once that model is developed, work has to be done on where such housing might be located but that will be a separate process.

Supportive housing is the term used by B.C. Housing that, up to this point, has meant small rooms in 40- to 50-unit facilities designed to house the homeless but where residents are allowed to consume alcohol and/or illegal drugs in their own rooms and they have supervised injection rooms to minimize the risk of overdoses.

A recent petition drive against such a facility on McCurdy Road resulted in that project being converted to one with tighter controls over illegal drug use but is still strongly opposed by many residents.

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