Zero homelessness target pushed back two years

One housing target may have been achieved but providing assistance to Kelowna’s homeless population will be an ongoing challenge, city councillors heard Monday.

When the Journey Home initiative was launched, there was a goal of providing 300 new supportive housing units. Those have been constructed, but there’s a need for at least 500 more, agency representatives told council on Monday.

“I hear people say sometimes, ‘Well, if people can’t afford to live here, they should move to Calgary’,” executive director Stephanie Gauthier said. “I don’t think we want to be that community. This is a community for everyone.

“I don’t think people should be driven out of Kelowna because they can no longer afford to be here, or because we don’t have the right health supports to meet people’s needs,” she said.

“Why do we need to make that investment? Because we’re a community that is committed to ending homelessness. It’s about recognizing that we are a community that wants to do it’s civic duty to look after its own.”

Mayor Colin Basran said there are critics of the Journey Home initiative on social media who wonder why 500 more housing units are needed now when the specified housing target just a few years ago was 300 units.

But Basran said it was “ridiculous” to assume that many of the people moving to Kelowna, Canada’s fastest-growing city, would never experience a trauma or develop an addiction or suffer a mental health breakdown that might result in them becoming homeless.

In 2018, when the Journey Home initiative was launched, the goal was to achieve “functional zero” — a state that describes a situation where homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring — in Kelowna by 2023.

The “refreshed” goal, the group says now, is December 2025.