Kelowna, B.C. pilot project aims to keep the homeless warm during cold snaps | 24CA News

The City of Kelowna is taking a web page out of Montreal’s e book because it tries to search out methods to maintain homeless individuals heat throughout chilly snaps.

The B.C. metropolis is working a brand new thermal shelters pilot challenge.

Thanks to funding from BC Housing, Kelowna is getting 27 of the shelters, costing between $500 and $700 every.

The shelters are available two sizes to accommodate one or two individuals.

“This will complement our other tools that we are using including the warming bus, tents, [and] warming supplies,” mentioned Colleen Cornock, the City of Kelowna’s neighborhood security companies supervisor.

The metropolis says simply utilizing the occupants’ physique warmth, the interior temperature within the shelters could be 15 to 18 levels hotter.

“They have been used for this exact purpose in Montreal and internationally in Czechia. They are a lightweight foam. They are easy to put up, assemble, and take down. They are intended to be durable for this purpose,” mentioned Cornock.

Kevin Schlemko, who’s at present experiencing homelessness, believes the shelters might assist.

He mentioned he has been sleeping open air nearly all winter, utilizing simply cardboard or blankets to attempt to hold himself heat.

“I have no feeling left in the tips of my fingers at this point. This has definitely been the worst fricken winter I’ve ever had,” Schlemko mentioned.

“I was outside all but a week this winter. It was fricken brutal: a damp blanket in the middle of a fricken blizzard so anything you can put between yourself and the weather outside [is] definitely useful.”

The plan is to deploy the shelters throughout chilly snaps on the metropolis’s designated outside sheltering location within the north finish of downtown.

However, there are some issues concerning the location.

“It is not clean or safe. It is definitely not safe. It is way away from people,” mentioned Chelsea Denis, who can also be experiencing homelessness.

“But I do think [the thermal shelters] would help keep people warm, for sure, as long as there is a lot of them because there are a lot of us.”

The metropolis factors out it solely has a restricted variety of the shelters and says in the event that they let individuals use them anyplace, it might be exhausting to handle the pilot challenge.

“We only have 27 units, so it is really incumbent on us to monitor where they are being used so we have the ability to bring them back in, clean them, sanitize them and then redistribute them to folks,” Cornock mentioned.

With cooler climate within the forecast, the brand new shelters could possibly be deployed within the subsequent few days.

&copy 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.