By Tom Mark

Housing Homeless Not Easy For Municipalities

Aug 29, 2017 | 10:10 AM

The City’s daytime camping ban in its parks is into the 2nd week.

Bylaw officers report little overnight activity in Polson Park and several warning tickets have been issued.

Social agencies who deal with the homeless continue to push for more housing

Mayor Akbal Mund agrees more housing is the issue, but it’s a catch 22 for municipalities.

“As soon as a municipality says we’ll look after it, guess what, you’re never going to see any funds from federal or provincial government. That’s the issue. People may not understand that. It’s like like everything that gets downloaded on municipalities now. When they download something on a municipality, they wash their hands of it.”

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A small, non-scientific survey by Kiss-FM News showed close to 90 per cent of more than 100 respondents feel all levels of government have to work together on housing

Mayor Mund says it’s not easy for a small community like ours to be heard.

“Smaller municipalities don’t get the funds that the larger cities do. So, when people say why does Kelowna and Kamloops get funds, it’s because they’re a larger population base. So it’s considered they’ll have a larger problem with homelessness. So the smaller communities are never even looked at.”

Although, the former Liberal government did come up with funds to purchase the former Journey Inn, which the John Howard Society is now operating as the Blair Apartments with 39 units for transitional housing

Mund expects the housing issue will come up at the UBCM convention in September.

by Tom Mark