By Cheryl Jahn

New supportive housing opens

Jul 8, 2022 | 3:04 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – This facility is brand new. Twenty units of supportive housing units located on First Avenue. The facility is owned by BC Housing, but it will be run in partnership with Active Support Against Poverty and the Northern BC arm of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

“They’re not full suites,” explains Kim DeMeyer, Executive Director for Active Support Against Poverty. “What we have are individual suites. They’ll have shared laundry, shared cooking facilities, and shared bathrooms. The idea is to, first, give them a place to live, someplace off the streets, someplace safe, and then start working on what they need.”

And to address some of “what they need’ comes from the Canadian Mental Health Association.

“We will not have a counsellor full time here. What we will have, though, are resident support workers,” explains Maureen Davis of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Northern BC. “So every resident who lives here agrees to have a support worker attached to them who will help them with whatever goals they’re wanting. Whether they’re wanting vocational goals, whether they’re improving their health and safety. Whatever the goals are, we’re going to be helping that individual move forward in their lives.”

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It’s the type of housing that has been missing in the community for a long time, modelled after significant study into how to assist someone to overcome the challenges of additions.

There is a kitchen that will not only serve as a common eating area but as a training facility as well to teach residents how to cook, while at the other end, the barber shop will stay. Again, an educational tool. A self-contained, secure place to live while you heal. But it is temporary housing.

“The application goes first through BC Housing and then there’s a committee that breaks them down from there,” explains DeMeyer. “whoever shows up for interviews has got the best shot. Our hope, yeah, is that people will get the skills, the services that they need and are able to move on. You bet.”