Castanet

After years of working within the Criminal justice system JHS suddenly is overseeing housing. I am guessing they followed the dollar - not like the prisons are sitting empty
I wonder if they think prisoners should be allowed to drink/do drugs why they are being " rehabilitated" in our jails
Doubtful

Canada is a great country because of the inclusiveness and kindness of its citizens. I am looking forward to the Agssiz Rd project going to council for vote and I will be there supporting it. Too easy to sit inside our comfy homes and point fingers at those down on their luck.

Scrobins94 wrote:Canada is a great country because of the inclusiveness and kindness of its citizens. I am looking forward to the Agssiz Rd project going to council for vote and I will be there supporting it. Too easy to sit inside our comfy homes and point fingers at those down on their luck.

to bad the criminal junkies do not feel the same way

My concerns and my experience

In my early twenties I lived in a city much bigger than Kelowna in an area of the city that was working class, probably lower middle class, a mix of older people and young people just starting their working life. At that time there was a large population of drug users in the area that I was in, and through out the city. There were many deaths, people found overdosed on front lawns, found in dumpsters expired, it was terrible. I was in the middle of all this happening. As a young person I learned to navigate through this, I did not experiment with drugs, I too often saw the results of drug use while walking to work, I didn't engage with that culture. Yes, some of those engaged in drug use do think they have their own culture, their own unique lifestyle with it's own rules. I was very close to it, had friends and family lured and seduced into it. My safety was to stay away from it.

Now in this smaller city I see the same thing happening in the city I've been in for 37 years. A relatively small but visible part of population are homeless, street entrenched, who do petty crime to survive and or pay for drugs. There is also an element who are career criminals or drug dealers. I want to stay away from it but it's right here on my door step. I have had things stolen out of my back yard, which is behind a fence and two gates. I've seen the neighbour's renter bring things back after "shopping/stealing" all night, and then have this spirited away at dawn before anyone can see it. I've seen the renter's motor bike stolen by the same people. The police said they couldn't do much about these "low hanging fruit", that their resources are better used for those higher up on the hierarchy of thievery. I've seen those people on bikes towing the little trailer, going into my neighbour's yards and I've challenged them, only to be challenged back and threatened. I've seen the fellow who has snorted too much coke sniffing and snorting as he walks down my street checking out all the driveways and back yards as he goes. I do challenge these people and send them on their way, but it doesn't make me feel safe. Not all of us can live in gated communities, or condos where you can drive in and shut out what is happening on the street. Not all of us live in areas far out and up the hill where the druggies don't travel.

Our homes are on the front line of many of the street entrenched people who live by their own rules. Do I think the police will come to arrest for the petty crimes that decimate my feeling of safety in my own home. NO. Do I feel confident that the leaders of our community have my safety at heart. NO. I think the focus is on the poor souls on the street, not my safety. I believe many leaders are well intentioned, but as has been said here, another component is the exceptionally good money to be made at higher levels of "doing good" and of following a certain theory, plan, or course of action. It does not make me feel safe if I think the "leaders" are biased in their decisions and direction. I and many others feel like the needs of their clients supercede my need to be safe in my own community, in my own simple home. I have already been the victim of their clients. I worry about where I can walk safely. I worry that I must personally protect my property. I feel that our city leaders don't care, or have given up on the personal safety of it's citizens. I do not believe that 'wet facilities' so close to where I live are in any way protecting me, a law abiding, working, but older citizen of Kelowna / Rutland. It is a fallacy of ageism that older people are wealthy, we aren't and we can't just move on, and we don't want to move from homes and the good lives we have struggled to build for ourselves.

I'm sorry that some people have made bad choices, I really am, but should I suffer because of their bad choices? I feel like I've already gone through this when I was young, I was able to stay clear. I've built a safe life, I've been very content and happy. Now I feel like this is all being pushed into my community, my safe area is less safe. Are the city leaders going to tell me to move while they push this unsafe environment closer to me? The city leaders have done nothing to make me feel safe, have shown me nothing about what they are doing to make me feel safe. Instead they make me feel like my concerns are nothing, that they are superior, that I should JUST trust them. I DO NOT !

.

Castanet, this is regarding the homeless so please post!!!
Disagree or agree, this letter is written on behalf of the controversial supportive housing and meeting on Jan 17. Are the seniors concerns unfounded or what do you think?
Write your opinions and experiences to the mayor and council if you like.

Hi everyone. I've referred to this before, and I'd like to mention it one more time as an important date is fast approaching. It's a relatively well documented event however with the humdrum of headlines, I want to make sure this one has been catching your eye. Let me explain.
There will be a public hearing on a rezoning application January 17th, 6PM - City Hall, regarding building supportive housing (Agassiz in Kelowna). It's one more supportive housing building to be added to several existing supportive housing stock scattered around town. However the big noise is that there has been some VERY fierce opposition to this project, by some some powerful people in the immediate neighborhood to this project. I've seen opposition before, but these immediate neighbours have time and resources. They have been and will continue to protest the hell out of this project.
City hall will be over-full with people. Yet it's public and you're welcome to go. However, encouraging letters are very much needed! Please email [email protected] and [email protected]. Please include your civic address and in the heading reference file # Z18-0109. That is my ask.
Lastly, here's what I know. I consider myself sufficiently versed with supportive housing. I don't live too far from one. I've worked by others for 10 years. I know the private businesses open to the public under these buildings who support them, I see the hundreds of children who walk by them everyday, and I personally know the people in these building. I also know they are absolutely safe. If anything, they run the risk of being shockingly boring and uneventful yet very successful at keeping people happy and housed. What more can you ask for with housing!? Whoever tells you otherwise, is unfamiliar in this area and their opinions are 100% based on affect heuristic, misinformation, and they're not based in evidence or reality. I am not part of JHS housing, but I work with so many individuals within supportive housing day-in and day-out. They're the best people. They don't deserve to be treated like vile and unsavory predators, pedophiles, and out-castes who can't live in society and will steal from grandma. These are normal people in our community who you might stand next to in the check-out line at the grocery story, you'll start to talk as they borrow your pen. They're your co-worker struggling with mental health, your grandparent on fixed income, your sibling with an intellectual disability, and it could be one day yourself after an accident (brain injury, trauma etc.).
We're too deep in a very serious housing crisis, to be creating barriers based on misinformation. Please send your letters of support. The 52 voiceless people who will be living in this building, they need your voice.

Elliot Penner

kmarina wrote:Castanet, this is regarding the homeless so please post!!!
Disagree or agree, this letter is written on behalf of the controversial supportive housing and meeting on Jan 17. Are the seniors concerns unfounded or what do you think?
Write your opinions and experiences to the mayor and council if you like.

Hi everyone. I've referred to this before, and I'd like to mention it one more time as an important date is fast approaching. It's a relatively well documented event however with the humdrum of headlines, I want to make sure this one has been catching your eye. Let me explain.
There will be a public hearing on a rezoning application January 17th, 6PM - City Hall, regarding building supportive housing (Agassiz in Kelowna). It's one more supportive housing building to be added to several existing supportive housing stock scattered around town. However the big noise is that there has been some VERY fierce opposition to this project, by some some powerful people in the immediate neighborhood to this project. I've seen opposition before, but these immediate neighbours have time and resources. They have been and will continue to protest the hell out of this project.
City hall will be over-full with people. Yet it's public and you're welcome to go. However, encouraging letters are very much needed! Please email [email protected] and [email protected]. Please include your civic address and in the heading reference file # Z18-0109. That is my ask.
Lastly, here's what I know. I consider myself sufficiently versed with supportive housing. I don't live too far from one. I've worked by others for 10 years. I know the private businesses open to the public under these buildings who support them, I see the hundreds of children who walk by them everyday, and I personally know the people in these building. I also know they are absolutely safe. If anything, they run the risk of being shockingly boring and uneventful yet very successful at keeping people happy and housed. What more can you ask for with housing!? Whoever tells you otherwise, is unfamiliar in this area and their opinions are 100% based on affect heuristic, misinformation, and they're not based in evidence or reality. I am not part of JHS housing, but I work with so many individuals within supportive housing day-in and day-out. They're the best people. They don't deserve to be treated like vile and unsavory predators, pedophiles, and out-castes who can't live in society and will steal from grandma. These are normal people in our community who you might stand next to in the check-out line at the grocery story, you'll start to talk as they borrow your pen. They're your co-worker struggling with mental health, your grandparent on fixed income, your sibling with an intellectual disability, and it could be one day yourself after an accident (brain injury, trauma etc.).
We're too deep in a very serious housing crisis, to be creating barriers based on misinformation. Please send your letters of support. The 52 voiceless people who will be living in this building, they need your voice.

Elliot Penner

Nice try yet Elliot Penner does work for JHS!!!

This is from Naniamo. This is what is happening with the supportive housing of addicts is like there. It will be like that in Kelowna I'm thinking. Fix them, don't coddle them. This is front page news on the NaniamonewsNOW.com


NANAIMO — The City of Nanaimo's leaders have expressed concern and disappointment with a substantial supportive housing complex quickly opened to alleviate the homelessness crisis.
“It has not turned out the way I had hoped or expected,” mayor Leonard Krog said during Monday's council meeting of the temporary supportive housing at 250 Terminal Ave. “One could not describe what's happened at 250 Terminal Ave. as a success...none of us are happy.”
Safety concerns around the site dominated discussion at the council meeting, with an official delegation and numerous speakers during question period. Councillors heard how residents in the area are now afraid to leave their houses at night, are often accosted when they do at any time of day and have noticed a significant spike in crime.
Mayor Krog and coun. Sheryl Armstrong were the most in agreement with the residents who came before council and answered the most questions or gave the most responses.
Krog said the first month after the 80 units of temporary housing opened in December was not in line with what he'd hoped.
The doors were opened after a breakneck construction period of roughly 170 units of housing at two sites in Nanaimo. It was prompted by the closure of downtown Nanaimo's tent city following a lengthy battle fought in the courts and the community.
Krog called the provincial response to the homelessness and tent city crisis “clumsily-handled to say the least. And unfortunately, the victims of it are many.”
Coun. Armstrong also expressed her concerns about the process, which happened without prior community consultation.
“The housing first model doesn't work,” Armstrong told the fourth presenter about the issue of the night.
“Unless we get detox and treatment, the problem isn't going away....all the studies now are showing that for those with drug addictions they need treatment first and then housing.”
Armstrong indicated she would make a motion directing City staff to begin the process of naming 250 Terminal Ave. a nuisance property. Such a designation would mean the cost of police responses to the site would be placed on housing operators Island Crisis Care Society and BC Housing.
Though the announcement of her intention was met with rapturous applause from the packed gallery, it never came to pass on Monday night.
Though details couldn't be discussed in an open meeting, attempts at change and solutions appear to be in the works.
Krog and coun. Ian Thorpe referenced in-camera discussions ahead of Monday's council meeting about the security concerns and threats around the supportive housing project.
“Quite frankly, some of the processes and checks and balances have not been put in place as quickly as they should have been,” Thorpe said. “I am hopeful that will improve in the near-future.”
“We expect a great deal to happen in the next couple of weeks,” Krog assured. “If it doesn't, I can say this council will do whatever it can to ensure there is a far more effective response from Island Crisis Care Society and BC Housing.”
The temporary supportive housing created on City-owned land on Labieux Rd., which houses roughly 65 people, was barely referenced in any of the discussions.

kmarina wrote:"Whoever tells you otherwise, is unfamiliar in this area and their opinions are 100% based on affect heuristic, misinformation, and they're not based in evidence or reality......Elliot Penner"

It's unfortunate someone can say anyone that disagrees is wrong when I'm sure Penner hasn't spoken to everyone that disagrees to find out whether or not they DO have first hand knowledge.

Fancy wrote:

kmarina wrote:"Whoever tells you otherwise, is unfamiliar in this area and their opinions are 100% based on affect heuristic, misinformation, and they're not based in evidence or reality......Elliot Penner"

It's unfortunate someone can say anyone that disagrees is wrong when I'm sure Penner hasn't spoken to everyone that disagrees to find out whether or not they DO have first hand knowledge.

I find the fact that Elliott Penner is listed as the director of community living services with the JHS a particularly biased viewpoint on the matter.

https://kelowna.cioc.ca/record/KNA1566

Yet Penner says he's not part of JHS housing which is the address he's using. It doesn't sound like he was there when Cardington Apartments opened.

I believe if you choose to live in a downtown area homeowners need to expect that almost anything goes, otherwise choose a residential area. There are homeless already travelling up and down that street and I imagine sleeping where they can find a spot. I am not sure what the attraction is, but they are there. There has been projects build on St Paul's and in Rutland that the public were against and I have not read about any problems. I hope the council will not change their decision based on public pressure.

Fancy wrote:Yet Penner says he's not part of JHS housing which is the address he's using. It doesn't sound like he was there when Cardington Apartments opened.

Lol - I missed the part where he says he doesn’t work for JHS.
So Elliott, are you just coincidentally another Elliott Penner, or straight up lying?

Fancy wrote:Yet Penner says he's not part of JHS housing which is the address he's using. It doesn't sound like he was there when Cardington Apartments opened.

Oh yes he was!!! JHS's offices are below Cardington Apartments on St Paul St

WalterWhite wrote:

Fancy wrote:Yet Penner says he's not part of JHS housing which is the address he's using. It doesn't sound like he was there when Cardington Apartments opened.

Lol - I missed the part where he says he doesn’t work for JHS.
So Elliott, are you just coincidentally another Elliott Penner, or straight up lying?

All faculty at JHS lies!!! They go through extensive training on how to deceive the general public and Gaelene Askeland is the biggest liar they have!!!

Also doesn't state whether the supportive housing he lives and works close to are wet facilities.. big difference between a treatment facility and a "lets keep em high and never fix em" facility