Results of homeless count conducted this month expected by end of May

Results from Kelowna’s homeless count are expected in late May.

More than 100 volunteers fanned out across the city on the night of March 6 to try to enumerate the number of rough sleepers.

“The count went well — pretty much according to plan,” Jordan McKenzie of the Central Okanagan Foundation said Monday.

He is still processing the numbers and data collected during the count.

In 2016, a similar count determined there were at least 233 people who were homeless in Kelowna. One in four was an Indigenous person.

Alina Turner, a consultant retained by the city to lead an antihomelessness project, told council in January she believed there could now be as many as 2,000 homeless people in Kelowna.

The 2016 survey found that 70 per cent of Kelowna’s homeless were men, and almost 80 per cent were between the ages of 25 and 64. About 60 per cent were homeless for at least half of the preceding year.

About 40 per cent of the homeless said they were living on the streets because they’d been unable to pay their rent or had been evicted for other reasons. Almost 20 per cent cited family conflict, and 11 per cent said they had an addiction or substance-abuse problem.

The 2016 count, as well as the recently conducted one, were funded by the federal government.

On Monday, the provincial government announced it would provide $550,000 to homeless counts in 12 B.C. communities. A count will be done in Penticton on April 23.

“Too many people struggle to find housing in our province. It’s a major issue in many communities across B.C. and something we hear repeatedly as we talk to people about how to reduce poverty,” Social Development Minister Shane Simpson said in a release.