Avery Taylor never dreamed he’d be setting up emergency housing in a hockey arena.
“It’s pretty exciting to take over a hockey rink,” said Taylor, senior manager of housing and support services for the PHS Community Services Society. “We see it as a challenge.”
Taylor made the comments Tuesday outside Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre, where work was underway to transform the arena into an emergency response centre.
The arena will be used to temporarily house 45 people from the homeless camps at Topaz Park and Pandora Avenue during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will provide meals, washroom facilities, health care, addictions treatment and harm-reduction services.
This will be the first time an emergency housing site will feature pop-up rooms. Each person will have a bed, a cabinet and a couple of dividers.
Social Development Minister Shane Simpson said the arena will be used as an emergency response centre until the end of June.
“We’ve got it booked for the next couple of months, through June, and there’s probably some room to extend that if required,” Simpson said. “It looks like sporting activities are not going to take place any time soon and that’s been part of our discussion with the operator.”
The objective is to get people into more secure permanent housing, he said. “We’re looking at more permanent options moving forward. We’ll be moving people as we put those in place or firm them up.”
The Memorial Centre is owned by the City of Victoria but operated and managed by the GSL Group of Vancouver. The province has entered into an agreement to rent the facility from GSL Group and it has entered into a partnership with PHS Community Services Society to operate the centre and provide the support services with referrals from Island Health and B.C. Housing.
Simpson said the money will come from B.C.’s $5-billion economic action plan.
Heidi Hartman, B.C. Housing’s director of operations for Vancouver Island, said the pods offer people the opportunity to have privacy and dignity while they are sleeping. The pods were built with the help of community partner, Staples Business Advantage. The province has plans to expand their use at other emergency response centres.
The space between them is quite generous, Taylor said.
“When we came in, we took a look at the pods and we tried to configure them in a way that gives everybody the maximum amount of privacy,” he said.
“We did test them out, trying to make it just as comfortable and private as possible because you don’t get a lot of privacy in shelter situations. I think we have a good set up. I was quite comfortable.”
Mental health workers and outreach workers will be at the centre 24 hours a day, Taylor said. People staying there will be given three meals a day, prepared at the arena by the Save-on arena staff. PHS is also working with Island Health on a safe-consumption site at the arena, he said.
“This is very new. It’s a hockey arena and so none of us has taken over a space like this before. So we’re just trying to work out the space that we have and making it as good for everyone as we can.”
People are expected to move into the arena in the coming days, once support staff is in place.
“This is a challenging time for everyone, especially for people experiencing homelessness,” Simpson said.
“In Victoria, we have seen encampments at Topaz Park and the Pandora corridor grow into unsafe, dense encampments that are compounding existing health, well-being and safety challenges. The centre offers a temporary and secure place with wraparound support services to help people stay safe during this time.”
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps said the city is grateful to GSL for making the facility available.
“Moving into the arena in the short term is a step closer for people to have safe, secure long-term housing,” she said.
Solicitor General Mike Farnworth issued a public-safety order last month that set Saturday May 9 as the deadline for moving about 360 people from the camps into hotels, motels and other facilities.
B.C. Housing has been transitioning about 15 to 20 people a day from the camps to 324 rooms at five hotels in the city. As of Monday, 92 people had been moved indoors.
With the addition of the arena, the province has now secured indoor spaces for 369 people in Victoria.
Simpson said he knows it will take longer than May 9 to move people from the Victoria camps into hotels and the arena.
“The order is very clear — it says that our commitment and our obligation as government is to make sure that we do the assessment of the individual campers, assess their health and social needs, and look at how we meet those needs and make them offers of housing and facilitate that relocation if those offers are accepted.”
B.C. Housing has partnered with the Aboriginal Coalition to End Homelessness to open 12 temporary shelter spaces at a different location to provide culturally supportive services to Indigenous peoples who are experiencing homelessness in the community.
