The Comox Valley visitor centre could be converted into an extreme-weather shelter site in its off hours this winter due to lack of suitable locations in the region’s urban centres.
Jesse Ketler, chair of the Comox Valley Regional District, said the district offered its visitor centre — located off Highway 19 just east of Cumberland — as a potential spot after the Comox Valley Coalition to End Homelessness asked local governments for space.
“It hasn’t been decided that we will be using that facility yet, but we have put it forward for their consideration,” Ketler said.
The provincially funded extreme-weather shelter program runs from November to March, but a callout from the district for partners to participate in this year’s program has so far gone unanswered.
Extreme-weather shelters open in the winter when a community issues an alert, under the Assistance to Shelter Act, that sleeping outside could threaten health and safety.
Ketler said sleeping maps would be laid out in the visitor centre’s boardroom, though the district is looking at potentially expanding the shelter space into the centre’s shop and display areas, where a kayak and a ski-lift chair are currently on display.
She said the visitor centre would continue to operate during business hours and would only be used as a shelter from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. The non-profit tasked with running the shelter would store the mats during the day.
Courtenay Mayor Bob Wells said up to 20 people could stay in the centre as long as the site meets fire-inspection requirements. Wells said the location, which is seven kilometres south of the city, might be best suited to those currently sleeping in their vehicles.
The lack of warm, dry shelter in the Comox Valley has driven some into desperate situations.
A Courtenay man sheltering in a commercial recycling bin with his dog was deposited into the back of an Emterra recycling truck in the early hours of Oct. 27 and had to be extricated by firefighters, Wells said.
Fortunately, the man did not sustain life-threatening injuries, but the incident highlights the need for more shelter space in the region, he said.
“Here we have an individual — who is somebody’s family member, somebody’s friend — who is really on hard times and was trying to find a place to stay warm and dry,” Wells said. “As we move into our winter months, those are two things that are becoming more and more difficult.”
Faith-based groups that have provided shelter spaces in past years have found it challenging to balance the demands of running a shelter with their own programs and services, Wells said.
“It’s asking a lot to have an organization stop what its mandate is, or what programming they’re offering to the community, for long periods of time.”
Wells said the search for downtown shelter locations with 1,500-square-feet of available space and built-in bathrooms continues. “We’ve had developers and business owners work with us on solutions that might help us in the future, but unfortunately, a lot of those are really difficult to get up and running within the next three or four months.”
The 2023 Comox Valley point-in-time count, which aims to provide a snapshot of the minimum number of people who are homeless in the community over one 24-hour period, identified 272 people sheltering on the streets, a number that has more than doubled since the start of the pandemic.
More than 80 per cent of those surveyed through the count in March said they have lived in the community for five years or more.
Sabina Acheson, Care-A-Van co-ordinator for the Comox Bay Care Society, said in an email that her mobile outreach team is seeing an increase in medical problems exacerbated by wet and cold conditions for those sheltering outside. Care-A-Van provides free health care and other services to people on the streets of the Comox Valley out of an RV.
The Comox Bay Care Society has tracked a 360 per cent increase in homelessness in the Comox Valley since 2013 and supports 300 to 670 individuals who are homeless or precariously housed in the region at any given time, Acheson said.
In addition to being stigmatized by some members of the community, people are struggling to find places to stay safe and warm, she said. “People living outside have been unresourced, deluged by rain and their belongings stolen or disposed of.”
In addition to offering up its visitor centre, the Comox Valley Regional District has allocated $91,000 toward transportation and security costs that aren’t covered by provincial funding for extreme weather shelters.
