This campsite is just off the Big White Road and the target of the latest Okanagan Forest Task Force cleanup effort.

Image Credit: Submitted/Okanagan Forest Task Force

A lot of the work done by the Okanagan Forest Task Force to clean up garbage and abandoned campsites is in remote areas and not always visible to the public.

But the group’s latest effort is a garbage strewn campsite that include two travel trailers and two vehicles from the road up to Big White Ski Resort.

“It’s just past the observatory, alongside the river,” task force founder Kane Blake told iNFOnews.ca today, May 11.

The Okanagan Observatory is four kilometres up Big White Road from the Highway 33 turnoff.

Blake and a handful of others hope to clean everything up but the two travel trailers today and will check the trailers to see if they can be towed away for disposal.

The site includes two travel trailers, two vehicles and lots of garbage.

Image Credit: Submitted/Okanagan Forest Task Force

He has spoken with the people who lived in the trailers for about a year.

“They’re homeless,” Blake said. “They have no money and no means to get rid of it. Now it falls on us.”

The task force has been cleaning up garbage from Central Okanagan forests for years but in the last couple of years has seen an increase in homeless people camping out throughout the region.

READ MORE: Okanagan group known for ridding the forest of garbage receives Conservation Officer Service award

“They’re usually in travel trailers,” Blake said. “They collect garbage and then they leave, and leave all their garbage and the trailers. You’d think, if they have the means to get it there, they would have the means to get it out but, that never seems to be the case.”

Given the escalating price of housing and rental rates in Kelowna, there are good reasons why so many people are heading to the bush to live.

Stephanie Gauthier, the executive director of the Journey Home Society, told Kelowna city council on Monday, May 9, that there are more than 8,000 people in the city paying more than 30% of their income in rent who are, therefore, at the risk of homelessness.

READ MORE: Kelowna's homeless population expected to double by 2026

While B.C. Housing has built more than 300 supportive housing units in the city over the past few years, the growing number of homeless – often victims of the rental housing crunch – means more than 500 more units are needed to meet the demand over the next four years.

B.C. Housing, currently, has no plans to build any more supportive housing in the city during that time.

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