The Community Action Team (CAT) is set to launch its outreach project July 17.
Sechelt council voted July 3 to give the CAT a $2,500 grant to allow it to get the project off the ground right away instead of waiting for a second year of provincial funding to be confirmed.
The project, known as Sunshine Coast Connections, includes a “peer action team” that will be available seven days a week to respond to community concerns as well as reach out to the homeless population to provide information on accessing resources such as public washrooms, showers, shelters, needle disposal boxes, Naloxone kits and other services.
The peer workers are chosen for their experience having lived with substance use, homelessness or mental health issues.
“Typically during the summer months an increase in our local homeless population occurs, and the community is feeling the effects of this increase,” a release announcing the start date of the project said. “Increasing and visible homelessness results from a lack of affordable housing across the Province, combined with a lack of shelter spaces and other resources in our community. The lack of shelter spaces, safe disposal containers and safer use sites in our communities create an increase in litter and improperly disposed needles on public and private properties.”
Those concerns were part of the reason Sechelt councillors supported the short-term funding.
At the July 3 council meeting, mayor Darnelda Siegers said some of the seasonal bump in the number homeless people has been a result of leases ending ahead of the summer season.
“What we’re finding is that there were an number of people who became homeless in May because the places they were living were going to be used for short-term rentals, some were going to be used at the beginning for June,” she said.
Councillor Brenda Rowe added that it’s a common misperception that the recent increase is visible homelessness is the result of people coming over from the Lower Mainland.
“Every community has the stories going around on social media that everyone’s coming from somewhere else,” she said. “Eighty per cent [of homeless] in every community are local.”
Starting July 17 any Sunshine Coast resident with a concern about discarded needles, litter or other issues relating to homelessness and substance use can contact the peer outreach team at 604-989-0366 or via email at [email protected], and the outreach team will respond within 24 hours. The CAT is hoping the public will contact the outreach team instead of calling RCMP or the municipality. The group is still working to secure office space.
Sechelt council also voted July 3 to spend up to $3,000, to buy a specialized needle disposal bin and $600 to pay for a portable toilet and garbage bin to be placed with the needle bin “in an area where needle disposal has been problematic in Sechelt.”
Sechelt communications manager Julie Rogers told Coast Reporter this week that the district is still looking for a suitable location for the bin and portable washroom.
