With plenty more winter ahead, the province is making contingency plans to find temporary overnight shelters for the city's homeless people.
Funding for an additional 30 beds during extreme weather alerts was announced Thursday by the provincial government to supplement permanent shelters.
Three downtown Prince George facilities will each be given 10 additional bed spaces to provide safe and warm overnight accommodations for people to escape the winter elements, part of a $1.3 million provincial program to make available nearly 1,200 extreme weather spaces in 70 B.C. communities.
The beds will be accessible during extreme weather alerts until March 31, 2013.
Those facilities, and their year-round bed capacities include: Bridget Moran Place - Active Support Against Poverty at 590 Dominion St. with 30 beds for men, women and families); AWAC shelter -- an association Advocating for Women and Children at 144 George St. with 30 beds for women and their children; and Ketso Yoh Centre Men's Hostel, operated by the Prince George Native Friendship Centre Society at 160 Quebec St. with 21 beds for men only.
"These additional spaces will help make sure that everyone has a warm, safe place to stay when the weather is at its worst," said Shirley Bond, Minister of Justice and MLA for Prince George-Valemount. "It is a true community effort, and I would like to thank all those involved for their continued commitment to those in need."
Most of the province's shelters provide three meals per day and have sufficient funding to remain open 24 hours per day, every day, eliminating the need for people to line up to register as overnight guests. The B.C. government funds 139 housing units created to assist to people who are homeless and are at risk of homelessness and provides 66 rent supplements to house otherwise homeless individuals in private market rentals.
Three years after it opened as a place for homeless people to spend the night, the Metis After-Hours Drop-in Centre closed in February. Operated by the Prince George Metis Community Association (PGMCA), the Sixth Avenue facility was forced to close due to insufficient funding.
Patrick Pocha, co-founder of the drop-in centre, has formed a new society -- the Northern Interior Metis Cultural Society -- and hopes to partner with the Mustard Seed Society to open another overnight drop-in centre next year. The society will continue to put on Sunday evening dinners, "until we run out of money."
"We're still trying, we haven't given up hope yet," said Pocha.
There will be no bed space at the drop-in centre when it reopens in an as-yet undetermined downtown building.
"It will be open from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., when all the facilities are closed and there's nowhere for the homeless or the street people to go," said Pocha. "They can watch movies and they can have a hearty soup and sandwich and fresh fruit and it's a safe place to run to when they are in trouble."
