Dozens of protesters gathered on McCurdy Road in Kelowna on June 30, 2019. A new program presented to Kelowna city council today, July 29, could lead the country in finding ways to get supportive housing accepted at the individual neighbourhood level.

(SEAN MOTT / iNFOnews.ca)

KELOWNA - Kelowna may be a national leader in dealing with homelessness with its Journey Home strategy, but given the recent massive petition campaign against the McCurdy Road housing complex, getting public buy-in is not going to be easy, no matter how good the process.

A new program presented to Kelowna city council today, July 29, could lead the country in finding ways to get supportive housing accepted at the individual neighbourhood level.

“The public message right now is so far off with misinformation that I don’t know how you bring them (residents) back,” Coun. Gail Given said after city staff explained how they hope to get more resident involvement and acceptance of existing and upcoming efforts to house the homeless.

It was less than two weeks ago on July 17 that council held a special meeting to say it had convinced B.C. Housing to make the McCurdy Road project less open to residents using illegal drugs. At that meeting, Given was heckled for suggesting any apartment in the city could be a “wet” facility.

Since then, people working in the field have talked to Given about the misinformation fueling the petition campaign.

“The feedback I got from those who are generating that fear and presenting inaccurate information, like wet facility versus dry facility and things that really aren’t real, was that I was ‘amazingly ignorant,’” Given said today. "People, when they are driven by fear are driven by that fear message I don't know how you undo that."

Coun. Gail Given has taken some heat for challenging the misinformation fueling the petition campaign against supportive housing in Kelowna.

(ROB MUNRO / iNFOnews.ca)

The petition billed the housing project as being for “substance addicted homeless” and being within one kilometre of five schools.

She understands that people are concerned about crime in their neighbourhoods but they are not taking into consideration other factors, such as the city’s ongoing efforts to clean out homeless camps, especially along the Okanagan Rail Trail near Leathead Road and Highway 97.

“We’re cleaning up the homeless camps and moving them into the open where we can see them,” Given said. “There were reports of crime rising in that area two years, four years before Hearthstone opened. Now it’s all Hearthstone’s fault."

What’s missing from the public discussion are things like the success stories in places like Hearthstone where people who were homeless got back on their feet, found jobs and have moved on, Sue Wheeler, the city’s social development manager, told council.

The model that was presented to council today calls, first of all, for the city to be involved with B.C. Housing, Interior Health and other agencies much earlier in the process when supportive housing is first being considered.

Once a site is located, people in those neighbourhoods need to be consulted so things like traffic flow, public safety and existing crime rates can be talked about and solutions developed with the residents involved.

That could mean something as simple as moving a bus stop or pruning vegetation, community safety director Darren Caul suggested, but it could also mean improved RCMP and bylaw response time to complaints when the housing opens.

It also means tailoring the communication process to the community affected, Wheeler said. A key to that is to develop guidelines for community advocacy committees and make sure they are effective.

“How that evolves, we’ll have to see,” Wheeler said. “The idea is for the community to have a voice, to be able to ask questions and to get the answers and take those back.”

Council agreed that a better communication system needs to be created and praised staff for only taking a couple of weeks to come up with the plan.

Wheeler said, after the meeting, that preliminary discussions were held earlier on with agencies like B.C. Housing, which is keen to join in the effort after being heavily criticized, here and in other cities, for how it handled the public process.

She could not say how long it will take to have a new committee up and running but, given the importance that so many agencies place on this issue, it should happen soon.

In terms of setting rules on where such housing can be built in the city, that is a separate discussion. It will be coming to council within the next few weeks.

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