Kelowna hopeful for additional funding
The City of Vancouver is more than doubling its homeless shelter beds to 300 for the winter.
The province has come through with $1.2-million dollars in funding for the temporary beds.
Kelowna's Director for Community Planning Doug Gilchrist says no additional funding has been announced to ease the city's ever-growing homeless population – but they're hopeful as Kelowna has a good partnership with BC Housing.
He says BC Housing has several different programs they could implement.
"Temporary modular housing – which are more like trailers, then there is modular housing, which we've seen a couple in Vancouver which can stay in place for quite a period of time – 10 or 15 years – and then there's premanent beds which would be a traditional form of construction," says Gilchrist. "Shelters, I assume, could be in any of those forms if they we to do a shelter program, or want to put a shelter program in our city."
BC Housing Minister Selena Robinson says the Vancouver beds are only temporary as they work on a long-term, homelessness action plan.
