RainCity Housing and the Town of Gibsons have confirmed the seasonal homeless shelter in Gibsons will open Dec. 12.
Funding from BC Housing was announced last week and the shelter will operate until March 31, 2019 at the same location as last year – 599 Gower Point Road, Christ the King Community Church.
During a two-month pilot project last year, the shelter drew a small number of complaints from neighbours, but Gibsons chief administrative officer Emanuel Machado told Coast Reporter a meeting Monday with the closest neighbours was positive and led to a protocol to minimize any impact to nearby homes.
A letter sent to those neighbours said, “The Town continues to support a winter shelter in any viable space that can be made available to protect our most vulnerable. The Town as well as Christ the King, however, want neighbours to feel safe and unthreatened through improved communications between the neighbourhood and service provider, RainCity Housing.”
The shelter will have space for 15 beds and be open from 6 p.m. until 8 a.m.
RainCity Housing said they are setting up a dedicated phone line for the shelter, 604-989-9314, with RainCity staff able to respond to inquiries round the clock.
RainCity also plans to provide meals, and has created an online sign-up for community members who want to donate meals – details are posted on the Sunshine Coast Homelessness Services Facebook page.
People who want to donate a meal, or who want to volunteer or offer other support can contact Robby Gillard, RainCity’s assistant manager for the Gibsons shelter, at 778-987-6092, or by email at [email protected].
RainCity will also be able to connect shelter clients with support services, such as addiction and mental health treatment.
The Gibsons shelter will supplement the 24/7 year-round shelter at the Upper Deck on Wharf Avenue in Sechelt. That shelter, which also has a 20-bed capacity, has had to turn people away, even in the spring and summer when demand for shelter spaces is typically lower.
BC Housing is also expected to begin construction in January on a new 40-unit supportive housing project on Hightide Avenue in Sechelt.
Gibsons Mayor Bill Beamish, speaking on Eastlink Community TV’s Talk to Your Local Government Dec. 6, said the Town is also working with BC Housing to acquire the former RCMP building on School Road from the federal government and convert it to transition housing, a deal it hopes to finalize soon.
The opening of the Gibsons shelter comes the same week as the release of detailed results from a spring homeless count on the Sunshine Coast that focused on the Sechelt-Gibsons corridor.
Of the 57 people who were identified by outreach volunteers as experiencing homelessness, 29 per cent were over 55 and 36 per cent have lived on the Sunshine Coast for at least 10 years. The Sunshine Coast also reflected a broader provincial trend of Indigenous over-representation in the homeless population, at 27 per cent, despite being just six per cent of the total population.
Thirty-nine per cent of the homeless people surveyed reported being employed.
Fifty-one per cent had been homeless for a year or more, but 30 respondents said they had access to shelter.
The main reasons given for experiencing homelessness were that rents are too high (56 per cent) and that their income is too low (41 per cent). Twenty per cent said there isn’t any suitable housing available.
