Boys, Girls Club building eyed again for housing

A community meeting will be held Wednesday to again discuss using the old Boys and Girls Club on Yates Street as transitional housing.

B.C. Housing said it wants to build on last year’s success by leasing the building at 1240 Yates again to house 40 people over the winter months.

“People will live there until the springtime and the idea is hopefully we’ll have modular housing in the region that they can move into as well as being placed in other units,” Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps said. One of the successes of the Yates Street housing, called My Place, is that 27 people transitioned from there into more permanent housing last year, she said.

While there was considerable neighbourhood apprehension when the idea was first floated in 2016, Helps expects the successful operation of the facility last year will have eased many concerns, adding that the fact the public meeting is being held at nearby Central Middle School is a positive sign.

“Before we even entertained this proposal from B.C. Housing, we checked with the school district and the principal and the small My Place Neighbourhood group that [Coun.] Charlayne [Thornton-Joe] has convened and chaired. None of them had any substantial challenges with the proposal as long as it was going to be the same as last year,” Helps said.

My Place, located across from Central Middle School, opened last January to provide transitional housing for people who were using the dismantled tent city on the grounds of the Victoria courthouse.

In addition to 40 tents erected on the gymnasium floor, My Place provided around-the-clock support services, storage, laundry and meals to people who had been camping at the courthouse tent city.

Once again, the proposal is to provide 24/7 staffing and 24/7 security.

Last November, the city began negotiations with a private developer to replace the 1959-vintage Fire Station No. 1, adjacent to the Boys and Girls Club as part of a mixed-used development.

A replacement fire hall could be built on the existing site or elsewhere and the redevelopment proposal could include the Boys and Girls Club property.

Helps said information about the fire hall replacement negotiations should be available soon.

“We should hopefully have some information on the fire hall negotiations soon. So the longterm use for that site is still up in the air. As soon as we make a decision about fire hall No. 1 we’ll be able to start planning for that site depending on the outcome of the fire hall negotiations,” Helps said.

The mixed-use component of the new development could include anything from condos to retail.

Preliminary rough estimates pegged the cost of replacing the fire hall at about $18 million, excluding land or temporary relocation costs.

The My Place information meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at the Central Middle School cafeteria.