After four years on staff, Don Elliott is taking the reins as the executive director of the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness.
Elliott, 33, said his mandate is to implement the coalition’s revised five-year plan to house and support nearly 400 chronically homeless people now that $60 million has come available from the Capital Regional District and B.C. Housing.
“The main challenge” is to capitalize on that investment and ensure that it’s maximized to provide homes for 367 people identified in a plan called Creating Homes; Enhancing Communities.
They’re far from the only homeless people in the region — the federal government survey identified 1,387 people without a home of their own this spring, but “they will be the first people addressed,” he said. “They are the individuals who are the most vulnerable — that for some reason or another we haven’t, as a community, been able to support effectively.”
Some are in shelters while others are on the streets, said Elliott, a native of Shawnigan Lake.
“We’re looking at trying to provide options so that service organizations can ask those individuals what would meet their needs,” he said.
The coalition has served as a co-ordinating body for several agencies working to end homelessness in the capital region since 2008.
Its budget is about $425,000, with nearly half from the CRD and $100,000 each from the City of Victoria and Island Health, as well as project contributions such as $100,000 from the Victoria Foundation to support the development of an aboriginal coalition to end homelessness.
Island Health, B.C. Housing and the CRD board are working together on capital investment and targets for placing people, while the coalition hopes to wrap up recommendations to guide development by the three funding stakeholders.
Elliott replaces Andrew Wynn-Williams, who helmed the coalition for more than three years. The coalition has three staff based at an Island Health building at 941 Pandora Ave., adjacent to Our Place.
The coalition says it has supported the creation of more than 500 units of supportive and affordable housing since 2008 and helped to raise awareness of homelessness in the region.
The $60-million injection requires “more of a focus on specific actions related to those funding opportunities, which didn’t exist before,” Elliott said.
