The people who ran a homeless shelter at the former youth jail in View Royal for the past two years measured success by their ability to find permanent homes for clients.
And, by that standard, they are immensely proud of what they managed to accomplish, said Grant McKenzie, director of communications for Our Place Society, which operated the Choices transitional shelter at 94 Talcott Rd.
Since opening the facility to residents of Victoria’s tent city in 2016, Choices’ staff were able to find homes for 103 of the 153 people who passed through the doors. The remainder moved to other provinces or cities or decided that the shelter was a poor fit for them.
“But to move 103 people that were basically living in tent city or living on the streets or in parks and move them into housing is the biggest success,” McKenzie said.
The shelter was supposed to close after six months, but remained open for two years due to a shortage of other housing options.
It’s finally expected to shut its doors this week now that the remaining 40 clients have moved into new supportive housing suites at the former Tally-Ho Hotel in Victoria.
View Royal Mayor David Screech said there’s no doubt Choices succeeded at stabilizing people and finding them homes.
“I still think that it was too bad that we couldn’t have had a more encompassing discussion with the neighbourhood before it was opened there,” he said. “But that was just a result of the tent city emergency — decisions had to be made and things had to be done.”
Screech said the shelter’s neighbours always had mixed feelings about the facility.
“There were some that were certainly supportive and there were some that certainly had concerns,” he said.
“I think Our Place did their best to address the concerns. They provided neighbourhood security and they had monthly neighbourhood meetings.”
McKenzie attributes Choices’ success to the dedication of its staff and the shelter’s location outside Victoria.
“So people who wanted to go through detox or that type of recovery, they weren’t always immersed in the downtown culture,” he said. “They were in a very nice part of View Royal, trees around, gardens around.”
Our Place put in place a number of recovery programs as well as a “hugely popular” art class and other amenities.
The jail’s commercial kitchen allowed a full-time cook to produce three hot meals a day for people who, in some cases, were emaciated from drug use and had been living on the streets.
McKenzie said one couple from the shelter entered detox and now both have jobs and a place to live.
“They’re doing extremely well and that’s something they decided to do because Choices offered them that stability,” he said.
“They weren’t in straight survival mode; they didn’t have to think about, ‘Where am I sleeping tonight? Where am I eating tonight?’
“That’s really what Choices was about — giving people stability so that they could start to get healthy and then make healthy choices.”
Our Place officials now hope to win support for a plan to convert the former youth jail to a therapeutic recovery community where 40 to 50 residents would stay from 14 and 24 months.
There’ll be an open house at the jail from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. today where Our Place will sketch out its vision for the building.
“There’s still a few hurdles to be leapt over,” McKenzie said. “One, we need B.C. Housing to sign over a lease agreement for the facility to us.”
The society also wants the province to provide $4.7 million to run the facility for seven years, after which it would support itself.
“Once we have those in place, we have to go through the Town of View Royal to get it rezoned into the appropriate use.”
Screech said the proposed project is significantly different than a shelter.
“So I think we need to hear from the residents and we will make sure that we have a proper community process this time before any decisions are made,” he said.
McKenzie said he’s optimistic that neighbours will come around to the idea.
“I don’t see why the community wouldn’t embrace therapeutic recovery, because it’s people who really want to change their lives. It’s a sober facility. It’s locked down. It’s a lot of things that a transitional shelter isn’t.”
Our Place announced Wednesday that it has hired Dana Young as its new director of the therapeutic recovery community. She is the former program manager of the Guthrie Therapeutic Community at the Nanaimo Correctional Centre.
