Interior shelter operators call for change, say winter mat shelters a 'futile' solution

Service providers across the Thompson-Okanagan are calling for action on housing the homeless as winter puts them at risk.

In a letter to mayors and councils, BC Housing, and Interior Health, the shelter and outreach operators are saying "no more" to an incomplete continuum of care.

"For the past several years, the response has been to set up winter mat shelter programs. Many operators have already been asked if we can step up again to run temporary winter shelter programs. This year, many of the operators in Vernon, Penticton, West Kelowna, Kelowna, Merritt, and Kamloops are saying no more," the group says.

"Temporary shelter programs are rife with problems for operators and the vulnerable and complex persons they serve.

"The cycle of bringing challenging persons in from the cold, to shelter them in the most basic of temporary shelters, to provide the barest of supports, to make limited investment in health, skills, and real housing; and then to have them exited back to the streets on the first day of spring with a tent and well wishes, has become an exercise in futility at best.

"While it may provide an escape from the cold, it is a sickeningly purposeless proposition to consider this a solution to the humanitarian crisis we are facing.

"We are tired of the futility of winter mat shelters. We are tired of seeing no meaningful outcome to the cycle of indoor cold winter shelter and outdoor summer tenting areas. We are tired of knowing that the brevity of both the investment and the stay means health will not improve, permanent housing will not materialize, and nothing will change."

Signatories to the letter include Vernon's Turning Points Collaborative Society, the Kelowna Gospel Mission, Penticton and District Society for Community Living, Kamloops' ASK Wellness Society, the Okanagan-Kootenay John Howard Society, and Nicola Valley Shelter & Support Society.

"We are also tired of burning out our employees with this work. Our sector attracts bright, capable, talented individuals who want to make a difference; we offer them winter shelter work that is dangerous, underpaid, and woefully under resourced. The work has become so dangerous and remains so underinvested that it is unconscionable for operators to say yes to this arrangement," their letter continues.

"It is an arrangement that we know we cannot adequately staff, cannot adequately protect the employees who work there from harm, and also cannot properly safeguard the clients who 'live' there. To be clear, most of us are running our regular shelters with staffing ratios that are troublingly low."

The group is calling for Interior Health and the province to work with local authorities "to develop immediate and long-term housing and recovery solutions to address the humanitarian crisis we are facing."

They say the shelter system "came with a promise that our shelters were part of continuum of housing where people in the shelters would be queued into supportive housing, or alternate housing options. After several years of operating shelters, this promise remains unrealized."

Many clients live for months and even years in the shelters.

"Our shelters have become a place for hospitals to discharge people who are ill and need respite and health care. Our shelters have become a place for police to drop off people with mental illness with an expectation that our support workers should be able to manage dangerous and unpredictable behaviours. Our shelters have been used to hide people out of sight from tourists and businesses. Our shelters have become a place where people languish because there has been no investment in programs, health, skills, wellness planning, and second stage housing."

The authors say those in shelters not only fail to thrive, but frequently experience further decline in health and substance use "as the reality of 'no way out' settles over them."

They say shelters are being operated in rundown, overcrowded buildings.

"Shelter, outreach, and supportive housing operators are at the front of the line fielding complaints for the behaviours of people on the streets. We are not responsible for the reality of homelessness, unpredictable behaviours, and the burgeoning mental health crisis; and yet, we have policy makers, politicians, businesses, and journalists holding us responsible to speak to why the people facing homelessness on the street are behaving badly and why we’re not doing more.

"For most people in shelter, their primary underlying issues are unmanaged addiction, health comorbidities, and mental health challenges; and yet, the health authority is often conspicuously absent," they charge.

"The health authority, by their absence, has left it to us to handle medication administration, co-morbidities, bathing and hygiene, overdose reversals in an unrelenting drug poisoning crisis, and unmedicated people with severe mental illness where poly substance use is the norm."

The step from shelter to supportive housing is often too great, as clients lack the supports they need.

"Time and again, our clients are passed over ... because they realistically cannot succeed in the supportive housing model without more support, they do not meet the priority criteria, or there is simply so few new vacancies," the letter states.

The authors say they are not resigning from shelter operations and offer a list of recommendations calling for changes to the way clients are prioritized for supportive housing, continued use of hotels and motels for those with higher levels of independence, and "whatever it takes" rent supplements that match the real cost of accommodation.

They also call for investment in shelter diversion programs, adequate staffing, IH funding for social workers, mental health nurses, and case management clinicians in shelters, a regulated safe supply of drugs, reduced barriers to diverse housing options, and additional drug treatment and recovery support.