Category Archives: Housing

Housing, Poverty, Spirituality

Parksville & Qualicum homeless left out in the cold

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Environment Canada issued sweeping alerts for Vancouver Island this week predicting the coldest weather of the year as arctic air and frigid temperatures descend along its east coast.

Yet the homeless in Parksville and Qualicum Beach have nowhere to seek warmth from the deep freeze after the region’s only cold weather shelter was closed last March.

Rev. Christine Muise of OHEART — a coalition of nine churches in the region that ran the shelter — has been advocating for a solution for close to a year after the shelter at St. Anne’s church had to close because the facility was inadequate to meet COVID-19 concerns.

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Housing

a couple of tiny homes outside linnaea farm

You may have seen a couple of tiny homes just outside the Linnaea Farm parking lot and wondered, what’s the story with those?

Well, that would be the right question to ask – the tiny homes are a multi-faceted project of Robert Carrington, aka Bobbie Noobie. 

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Housing, Poverty

Who WIll Be Left? Cortes Island Housing crisis

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[Editorial by Bill Dougan, reprinted with permission and some editing; this article first appeared in Tideline on Jan 15, 2021]

As long as I have resided on Cortes Island, housing has been an issue. In my earlier days many folks had housing most of the year, but would move out to allow the owners to enjoy their property during the summer months. This was not an ideal situation but it now appears, in hindsight, the Good Ol’ Days.

This year we have 18 families residing on the Gorge Harbour Marina Resort property; most of these people are here because they cannot find a place to live. Some of these people have lived on Cortes Island for years, built a life here, have friends and children here… but now find themselves with no place to stay on a permanent basis .

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Development, Housing

From tent city to affordable housing – 58 W Hastings Street in Vancouver

By Jen St. Denis, The Tyee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

It’s been used for a tent city twice, a community garden, a street market and informal overdose prevention site, and for an emergency  medical unit during the early days of Vancouver’s overdose crisis. Now construction of  badly-needed social housing for the Downtown Eastside, promised in 2016,  is set to start at 58 W. Hastings St. 

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