People needing a warm place to stay during the winter will be able to access more emergency shelter spaces in Prince George thanks to the province’s extreme weather response and shelter programs.
The Ketsoh Yoh Centre, the Association Advocating for Women and Community (AWAC) along with Active Support Against Poverty Housing Society received funding for a combined 40 extra spaces this winter.
AWAC Executive Director, Connie Abe said to MyPGNow this comes at a good time.
“It’s very helpful because we need to get the additional staff in to handle the influx of people we’re seeing coming in because of the cold weather. It helps offset that cost because we are only staffed to handle the 30 beds we currently have.”
Abe adds the winter season poses a much bigger challenge than the summertime.
“We find that in the summer weather individuals would rather stay outside then come in and access the shelter bed. So when the cold weather hits they tend to come because the weather is too cold to stay outside, which basically forces them into the shelter.”
“But when we have additional people coming in, we have to be able to bring in more staff to handle the increase of individuals that were working with.”
AWAC is even expanding its operations to allow men to come in during the daytime hours between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM.
“This gives them the opportunity to access the showers, laundry and we even have a storage program now so that they can come in and keep their belongings in the building.”
“And this year we also partnered with BC Housing and the city to expand our extreme weather outreach program where in the past three years we’ve had an extreme weather team between 7:30 PM and 1:00 AM they connect with individuals on the street that are staying outside to make sure they are OK by handing out toques and gloves, warm winter clothing and some food and we encourage them to access the shelter.”
Extreme weather response shelters in BC will be available starting tomorrow (Friday) until March 31st of 2020.
This season, BC will have 1,355 temporary shelter spaces and over 820 extreme weather response shelter spaces.