FILE PHOTO - Mission Flats Manor at 805 Mission Flats Road will stay open to residents until at least November 2022.

(KAREN EDWARDS / iNFOnews.ca)

An ASK Wellness-run temporary housing facility in Mission Flats had its lease extended for another year.

When it was first opened in 2018, the housing facility sat on a property leased by B.C. Housing on a temporary three-year term, with the option to extend for two years.

City council approved the three-year least at 805 Mission Flats Road to start in November 2018, but in a statement to iNFOnews.ca, B.C. Housing says it exercised the option to extend for at least one more year.

The city council of the day approved the lease back in 2018, but because the option to extend was established in the agreement, there was no need for B.C. Housing to negotiate that extension with council when they decided to keep it open until at least November 2022, according to City chief administrative officer, David Trawin.

B.C. Housing did not say when it opted to extend the lease.

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The 55-unit temporary housing facility, built in the style of a temporary work camp, is on land leased by B.C. Housing for $1 per year.

Council voted in favour of the lease in a closed council meeting on Aug. 14, 2018, which is common when negotiating real estate deals.

Mission Flats Manor was always intended to be temporary in order to address growing needs to house the homeless as a short term solution, but B.C. Housing may still decide to extend the lease on that property for one more year.

One of the challenges facing the property since it opened is the lack of transit, which has not changed. There are no bus routes to that property, nor much for sidewalks and bike lanes.

When it opened in 2018, ASK Wellness executive director Bob Hughes said the isolation could benefit its residents.

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"One of the reasons why we got interested in the project here, is that there may be tremendous benefit from being removed from the kind of chaos that many of the folks that we work with encounter on a daily basis," Hughes said to iNFOnews.ca in 2018.

ASK Wellness did not respond to requests for comment in time for publication.

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