Gaelene Askeland is the executive director of Journey Home Society.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Journey Home Transition team
May 31, 2019 - 2:08 PM
KELOWNA - About 100 people are expected to join in a “design lab” to learn about emergency homeless shelters and help decide what kind of shelters Kelowna should have in the future.
The June 13 lab already has about 75 people signed up to participate but can accommodate another 25 or so, Gaelene Askeland, executive director of the Journey Home Society told iNFOnews.ca.
"The intention is to pull everybody together — as broad a group as possible — and share with them what a number of different shelter models look like, including the ones we have here in Kelowna, and look at what the needs are going to be, both now and in the future, for shelters,” she said.
“We want to get some input from the broader community about what style of shelters we might be looking for, rather than just hoping that funders will come along and we’ll just take whatever they fund. We can proactively, as a community, decide what kind of shelter we want to provide to folks who have lost their homes and need that for a short time.”
What the workshop won’t do is deal with the question about where shelters should be located, Askeland said. That’s city council’s job.
She’s bringing out a guest speaker from London, Ont. to talk about different models, such as having services more centralized or different levels of housing on different floors of the same building.
Anyone wanting to participate can register online.
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