Service providers across the Thompson-Okanagan are calling for action to house the homeless as winter puts them at risk. In a letter to mayors and councils, BC Housing and Internal Health, shelters and service managers are saying “no more” to an incomplete continuum of care. “Over the past several years, the response has been to create carpet winter shelter programs. Many operators have already been asked if we can ramp up running temporary winter shelter programs again. This year, many of the operators in Vernon, Penticton, West Kelowna, Kelowna , Merritt and Kamloops are not saying more,” the team says. “Transient housing programs are fraught with problems for operators and the vulnerable and complex people they serve. “The cycle of bringing in cold-challenged people, housing them in the most basic temporary shelters, providing maximum support, making limited investments in health, skills and real housing, and then leaving them behind. on the streets on the first day of spring with a tent and wishes, has become at best an exercise in futility. “While it may offer an escape from the cold, it is a sickeningly pointless proposition to see it as a solution to the humanitarian crisis we face. “We are tired of the futility of winter carpet shelters. We are tired of seeing no meaningful results in the cycle of indoor cold winter shelters and outdoor summer tent areas. We are tired of knowing that the brevity of both investment and accommodation means Health it will not improve, permanent housing will not materialize and nothing will change.” Signatories to the letter include Vernon’s Turning Points Collaborative Society, Kelowna Gospel Mission, Penticton and District Society for Community Living, ASK Wellness Society of Kamloops, Okanagan-Kootenay John Howard Society and Nicola Valley Shelter & Support Soci. “We are tired of burning our employees out with this work. Our field attracts smart, capable, talented people who want to make a difference. We offer them winter shelter work that is dangerous, underpaid and woefully under-resourced. The work has been done so dangerous and remain so underinvested that it is unconscionable for operators to say yes to this arrangement,” their letter continues. “It’s an arrangement that we know we can’t adequately staff, we can’t adequately protect the employees who work there from harm, and we also can’t properly protect the customers who ‘live’ there. Staffing rates that are alarmingly low.” The group is calling on Home Health and the province to work with local authorities “to develop immediate and long-term housing and rehabilitation solutions to address the humanitarian crisis we face”. They say the shelter system “came with a promise that our shelters were part of the housing continuum where people in shelters would queue up for supportive housing or alternative housing options. After several years of shelters, that promise remains unfulfilled.” Many clients live for months or even years in the shelters. “Our shelters have become a place for hospitals to release people who are sick and need respite and health care. Our shelters have become a place where the police drop off people with mental illness with the expectation that our support workers will to be able to manage dangerous and unpredictable behaviors. Our shelters have been used to hide people away from tourists and businesses. Our shelters have become a place where people languish because there has been no investment in programs, health, skills , wellness planning and second-stage housing.” The authors say that those in shelters not only fail to thrive, but often experience further declines in health and substance use “as the reality of ‘no way out’ settles in.” They say the shelters operate in dilapidated, overcrowded buildings. “Shelter, service and support housing operators are on the front line to make complaints about the behaviors of people on the streets. We are not responsible for the reality of homelessness, unpredictable behavior and a growing mental health crisis. We have policy makers, politicians , businesses and journalists who hold us accountable to talk about why people who encounter homeless people on the street are behaving badly and why we are not doing more. “For most people in shelter, their main underlying issues are uncontrolled addiction, health co-morbidities and mental health challenges; and yet, the health authority is often conspicuously absent,” they say. “The health authority, in their absence, has left it up to us to handle medication, co-morbidities, bathing and hygiene, overdose reversals in an unrelenting drug poisoning crisis, and unmedicated people with serious mental illness where the plural use is the norm.” The step from shelter to supportive housing is often very long as clients get the support they need. “At times, our clients are passed over … because they cannot realistically succeed in the supportive housing model without more support, they do not meet the priority criteria, or there are simply so few new vacancies,” the letter states. The authors say they are not abandoning shelter functions and offer a list of recommendations that call for changes in how clients are prioritized for supportive housing, continued use of hotels and motels for people with higher levels of independence, and “as-needed” rentals . supplements corresponding to the actual cost of accommodation. They also call for investment in shelter diversion programs, adequate staffing, IH funding for social workers, mental health nurses, and case management clinicians in shelters, regulated safe medication supply, reduced barriers to housing options, and additional drug treatment and recovery support.
