Kristine Shepherd (right) serves a Monday night meal at Nanaimo Square along with daughter Ashley and father Dan McCune. The meals are moving to Main Street's 700 block next month.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED / Kristine Shepherd
May 21, 2019 - 6:00 PM
PENTICTON - A Penticton organization that feeds 60 to 70 people in need every Monday is voluntarily leaving its longtime location in anticipation of the city forcing a move.
Kristine Shepherd has been managing Monday night dinners at Nanaimo Square for the past four years. She and the volunteers she works with provide a home cooked meal, toiletries, socks, sleeping bags, dental care, feminine hygiene products and safety items to the city’s homeless on Monday nights.
Shepherd will now relocate the weekly-supper to Sunrise Pharmacy in the 700 block of Main Street.
“The city is currently targeting (the) homeless with policies like leasing sidewalk space. I feel they will try to lease the rest of the space and felt we should leave now. We can’t do that overnight, we need time to let people know,” she said.
Shepherd said Sunrise Pharmacy offered space and she was grateful to accept.
“They already do a breakfast program and are familiar with the space requirements and people. It seemed like a logical move,” she said.
Shepherd says her Monday night offerings provide a sense of community, giving the less fortunate the feeling they matter and an opportunity to break bread together.
“A lot of people don’t realize how easy it can be to (end up) on the street. The biggest reason is loss of a job and the inability to find a new one,” she said.
City bylaw services supervisor Tina Siebert said in an email she believes Shepherd’s suppers have outgrown the space she was utilizing and with the new license to use space in the square “it might be challenging.”
Siebert said it was up to Shepherd whether or not she moved.
Downtown Penticton Association Executive Director Lynn Allin said in an email the leasing of space at Nanaimo Square to a city business was done through the City of Penticton. She said the business association has no jurisdiction over such leases.
“However, I understand that Kristine Shepherd has been told by (development services manager) Anthony Haddad of the City of Penticton that Monday night meals at Nanaimo Square could continue as long as they do not use the chained-off section the business is leasing,” Allin said in the email.
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