Grim winter ahead for those sleeping rough in Kelowna
As November arrives, accompanied by sub-zero overnight temperatures later this week, emergency winter shelters normally start opening their doors.
That’s not likely to happen in Kelowna this year with more than 100 people sleeping without shelter.
The Kelowna Gospel Mission could help a bit if they could open to full capacity at their new Bay Avenue shelter, doubling their beds to 60 from 30.
But there’s no time frame for that to happen.
“We continue our efforts to get night staff,” Carmen Rempel, executive director of Kelowna Gospel Mission, told iNFOnews.ca. “There is no estimated time to open.”
Like so many other businesses and agencies these days, labour shortages are one of the biggest issues plaguing them.
Remple is offering $500 bonuses for people willing to sign on and be trained to work the night shift at the new shelter but still needs about a dozen people.
“It’s compounded by the fact that, in our industry, we have a lot of burnout,” she said. “We have a lot of people that are exhausted and we have more shelters in our city than ever before.”
Given those constraints, the number of people with the skills and willingness to work nights is very small even though, she says, “it’s an exciting, rewarding career.”
While she can’t speak for other agencies in the city, given what the Gospel Mission is going through, Rempel can’t see others being able to expand their services this winter.
Over the weekend, a fire destroyed a homeless shelter next to the Okanagan Rail Trail in Kelowna while record numbers of people have been setting up tents in recent months at the city-run camping area in the North End of downtown.
READ MORE: Record number of homeless people at Kelowna Rail Trail campsite
In the winter of 2019-20, the City of Kelowna set up its first supervised camping area with the requirement for campers to pack up their gear every morning and set up again in the evening.
Through that winter, warming tents were set up to fight the counteract frigid temperatures while lowering the risk of fires in the tents.
READ MORE: Kelowna taxpayers spent roughly $1 million dealing with homelessness last year
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