By Spencer Sterritt

Local homelessness advocate asks for more transparency

Feb 14, 2017 | 5:05 PM

NANAIMO — Kevan Griffith, who runs the extreme weather shelter at the First Unitarian Fellowship of Nanaimo, feels left in the dark about who is getting housing in the city.

“It just seems like I’m hearing from guys who show up here out of the corrections systems that they got places and I know it’s not halfway houses,” he told NanaimoNewsNOW. “I wonder where that funding is coming from.”

Griffith said he’s never seen workers from organizations such as the John Howard Society ever enter his shelter doing outreach. When he asked to see who was being housed by these organizations, apparently he was told it couldn’t be done due to confidentiality issues even though he offered to sign confidentiality agreements.

“I just want to see some transparency about what’s happening,” he said. “There’s got to be more accountability about who is being housed, where they’re from and who referred them.”

As well as who is getting housing, Griffith said he wants to know how the homeless are being treated once they have a place since the recovery rate for addictions and treatments is low.

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“We wouldn’t take a feral cat into our house and expect it to behave like a house cat. How can we take someone who’s feral on the street, put them in housing and say ‘you’ll be fine?’ We can’t just leave people in their room to rot away. Sometimes we need to be led to water and made to drink.”

Housing coordinator Andrew Ferguson with John Howard Society Nanaimo said they do provide housing to those coming out of corrections through their Rental Support Program, which is separate from their Housing First program and also helps women and youth.

Housing First is designed to help those who are chronically or episodically homeless and Ferguson said they helped house more than 20 homeless so far.

“Certainly some people do come out of prison and have a long history of homelessness when they’ve been taken on, but there’s also others in the program who we’ve helped. It’s a mix of both,” he said.

For the Housing First program, Ferguson said clients are referred to them through places such as the Salvation Army or probation officers and often those they help contact them directly.

“We seem to be finding clients from all over,” he said. “I would like to obvious engage services that maybe feel like they’re not seeing us as much as they want for their clients. We want to see everyone.”

Spencer.sterritt@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @spencer_sterrit