Clock ticking on emergency shelter

• Doyle Avenue shelter lease ends March 31
• 60 people will be without a place to go

Sixty people will be out of a place to live next month when the Doyle Avenue shelter closes and almost as many people working there could be out of a job.

The lease at the former site of the Daily Courier ends on March 31, making way for construction to begin on the new UBCO downtown campus.

Although there isn’t currently a place to host a new shelter, Kelowna’s Gospel Mission said it’s working with BC Housing and the City of Kelowna to find a new location.

“The last thing we want is for those 60 folks to suddenly be living it rough on the streets in downtown Kelowna,” Carmen Rempel, executive director at Kelowna’s Gospel Mission told Kelowna10.

Rempel said they are working in conjunction with the other shelters in the city, but most of them are at capacity, leaving no place for those experiencing homelessness to go.

The Doyle shelter also has over 50 staff members who will no longer have a job once it shuts down at the end of next month.

“That’s obviously not ideal for anybody, and incredibly heartbreaking, so we are actively, ambitiously pursuing other locations,” Rempel said.

Finding a new location comes with many challenges Rempel explained, such as getting a place in downtown that has enough open space to house all of the beds and people who utilize it. They also have security and privacy concerns to take into consideration when determining if a location will be a good fit.

However, the biggest challenge they face beyond the physical space is the neighbourhood impact of having a shelter.

“It’s still a big question for people of whether or not they’d like to lease their commercial space to a homeless shelter,” Rempel said. “There’s all sorts of stigma around what challenges that might bring.”

At the shelters operated by the Gospel Mission, there are programs in place for employment and cleanup, and security is also provided around the block.

Rempel said regardless of how people view those experiencing homelessness, they should support shelters as they are the solution, not the problem.

“For every complaint note that I’ve received about our Doyle Avenue shelter, I have ten notes of encouragement and affirmation from neighbours of the shelter,” she said.

“Many of [them] have become donors who now actively support or volunteer to help with our work, because they see the value it’s brought to their neighbourhood.”