Kelowna residents came together on Tuesday to simulate what it is like to be homeless and break down barriers in our community.

The planning and measurement meeting to end homelessness was put on by the Canadian Observatory on Homeless with Kelowna’s Journey Home Strategy.

Kaite Burkholder Harris, Project Manager, Canadian Observatory on Homelessness said this is a national project called Make Zero Count and is also taking place in other locations across Canada.

Functional zero means that communities have a systematic response in place to ensure that homelessness is prevented whenever possible.

A room full of service providers, stakeholders and people who have lived the homeless experience took part in the role play.

Participants were given a profile of a person who was trying to make their way through services in Kelowna.

“Today we are all focused on how do we actually dig into the concrete reality of this and implement this,” said Burkholder Harris. “The goal is to have a deep understanding of people’s experience of being a user of the system and having to navigate the system.”

Darlene Taylor, Assistant professor, school of nursing at UBCO, was given a character named Sarah.

“She is newly out of the foster care system and she is trying to go to school and find some independent living but she isn’t able to get affordable housing so her life starts to fall apart,” she said.

Taylor said playing Sarah and going through the services was frustrating.

“Now that I see how the systems all build on one another, if one area breaks down… it all breaks down,” she said.

Even though the event was fictitious, Taylor said it gives a look into the barriers that people in Kelowna deal with everyday.

“We have the knowledge, we know all this stuff in our heads,” said Burkholder.

“What I think is the game changer for when things really start to shift in community is when a whole lot of people get at every level to feel what it is like to be at the other side of the table.”