Blizzard-like conditions in Kelowna, B.C., Monday morning prompted Skylar Byrt and Tiffany Cutting to drop off a trunkload of winter gear to the Gospel Mission homeless shelter.
“Blankets, clothes…scarves, toques, pillows,” said Cutting.
With homeless shelters filled to capacity and no winter facility secured, dozens of people in Kelowna are sleeping outside and in tents.
“I’m warm at home and I just think about everybody else that’s freezing and outside,” said Byrt.
“It’s awful, it makes me sick. It really makes me sick.”
The situation is not much better in Vernon or Penticton.
According to service providers, there are about 100 people living outside in Vernon and 80 or so in Penticton.
“It’s an issue of life and death. It is and so our outreach team goes out every morning, bringing warm breakfast to people who are sheltering outside and part of what they do is check to see if everybody made it through the night alive,” said Carmen Rempel, executive director of the Gospel Mission.
So far, no site has been secured to act as a temporary winter shelter by BC Housing and the City of Kelowna and the need for one is getting more critical with each passing day.
“There’s an urgent need to get people inside right now and there’s conversations and there’s people scrambling behind the scenes trying to find a warming shelter,” Rempel said.
“But the reality is that operators are pretty darn stretched.”
Rempel said even if a facility is identified and secured, staffing it amid the labour shortage presents a whole different challenge.
“Even if we were to find a location, who’s going to operate it,” Rempel said. “So I know for the Gospel Mission, I can only speak for us, we don’t have the capacity to take on another winter shelter this year.”
The Gospel Mission opened the Bay Ave. shelter last month but due to staffing shortages, it’s only been able to open 30 of the 60 available beds.
The lack of suitable sites for a shelter combined with the staffing crunch means there is a good possibility of a winter shelter not opening this year at all.
“It’s absolutely possible,” Rempel said.
BC Housing told Global News last week it’s working closely with the City of Kelowna to find a suitable location for an emergency shelter but according to the city’s deputy mayor it’s not looking promising.
“Right now the forecast is not looking good,” said Kelowna deputy mayor Loyal Wooldridge. “This should not be surprising when every single year we are scrambling with emergency shelters and mat programs and now staffing continues to be one of our major challenges.
Wooldridge added that hotel rooms may be considered as an option during the extreme weather.
“We will be looking to our partners to look at hotel sites,” he said. “We know that that did work well during Covid.”
In the meantime, Rempel said if anyone wants to donate winter gear
“We have a dire need for sleeping bags right now,” she said. “So if people want to want to drop off sleeping bags and blankets, we will get them to where they need to go.”