The number of people camping overnight at the City of Kelowna's sheltering area along Weddell Place continues to grow.
The expansion has led to some key changes in how things are being managed.
It's a kinder and gentler approach.
Close to half of the city's unhoused community spends the night at this encampment.
"This is where we have the greatest concentration of our unhoused community members in the city," said Bylaw Services Manager Kevin Mead.
Mead joined the city last year, with a background in the military, but his approach doesn't sound militant at all.
"What we do try to do is work with all of our community partners and stakeholders," said Mead.
When he looks at the sprawling line of tents stretching along Weddell Place, he doesn't see a housing, crisis, he sees people in a situation he describes as "tragic".
"There has been an influx," said Mead. There are between 70 and 100 people seeking shelter in this spot each night.
"What we really are concerned about is ensuring the health, safety and security of those that are using this site," he continued.
"These are members of our community and we do want to ensure that there are these base levels of service provision."
Technically, a city policy requiring tents and other structures to be struck down each morning remains in place, but in practice, it's been all but abandoned.
"What we do is exercise some operational discretion in how we manage that," said Mead.
It's a great relief for people such as Gary Yauga, who remembers when that rule was strictly enforced.
"Every night we'd have to pack everything up, put it in storage, come back here at 5 pm, get it out of storage, set it up," explained Yauga.
"We're talking middle of winter you'd have to do this."
He said there wasn't much to like about how things were in the beginning.
"Amenities were few and far between," he said. But he said it's better now.
"Yeah, it is. We're getting regular garbage pickup now."
For Mead, the guiding principle is humanitarianism.
"Really it is a matter of maintaining dignity and respect for all of our community and that includes this portion of our community."
He said having such a large number of our unhoused community in one spot has benefits.
"What this does allow is more frequent and ready connection with those other social services and health services to come help and assist this community to finding a path out of homelessness."
At the same time, Mead points out that the responsibility for managing the site extends to the surrounding community as well.
"That includes the business community it includes the general public, the residential community and everyone has a say."
He credits other agencies including Metro Community, the outreach community, the RCMP and others for their help at the site.
"This is a community challenge that we're all trying to meet as a community," said Mead.
We're really trying to invite the rest of the community to work with those of us that are already working together," he said,
"to help serve the entirety of our community as best we can."
If you get value from KelownaNow and believe local independent media is important to our community we ask that you please consider subscribing to our daily newsletter.
If you appreciate what we do, we ask that you consider supporting our local independent news platform.
