By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
Housing for healthcare professionals in Oliver has made an incremental but important step forward following meetings between the Oliver delegation and the Ministry of Health during the recent Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) convention in Vancouver.
“One of the things that I have been working on for quite a while is a project here to get some housing for healthcare workers built . . . looking at some of the unused Interior Health lands that we have in Oliver,” Oliver Mayor Martin Johansen told the Times Chronicle following the conclusion of the week-long UBCM.
These unused lands include areas around the South Okanagan General Hospital (SOGH) and the Sunnybank Retirement Centre.
In meetings with Adrian Dix, Minister of Health and other health officials including Susan Brown, President and CEO of Interior Health Johansen said they were able to get “a thumbs up” with a commitment to work on ironing out the details around leasing a portion of the land around Sunnybank.
Map showing the location of Sunnybank Retirement Centre and vacant land in Oliver.
Google Maps image.
Clearly upbeat on the development he said: “It’s a project that we’ve been trying to get off the ground here for a while, and it was great that at UBCM, when we met with the Minister of Health, [and] the CEO for Interior Health . . . we had a good discussion about it and came away with a thumbs up and let’s, work on the details and see if we can get this thing done.”
The first step is to hammer out a lease agreement between the Town of Oliver and Interior Health, “and I’m working with a funding partner as well as to have a fundraising campaign,” he said adding he’s looking forward to building some housing units there.
Johansen said he couldn’t elaborate much more on the project at this point but said more information will be available in the next couple of months.
“I’m optimistic we can but a few more things need to be worked out. I think that’s a real positive, I’m looking forward to getting the details worked out and hopefully break ground early next year,” Johansen said.
He emphasized the Town wouldn’t be buying the land, but instead leasing it and then building the housing through fundraising and in cooperation with funding partners, the details of which will only emerge further along in the process.
“We’re not buying the land and building houses, we’re leasing unused land that’s been sitting there for 45 years.” He added that there are no plans to do anything else with the land like expanding long-term or extended care, for instance.
“So we’re going to use that land to try and prop up the needs in the community with the ER department,” he said. “We have so many people come here from outside of Oliver to support our hospital. It’s just something that we have to deal with in a smaller rural community.”
He added that when he first spoke to Minister Dix about this in April, when he was in Victoria he was surprised at the reception. “I couldn’t believe how excited he was about the initiative.”
Johansen noted that similar initiatives are underway in other parts of the province including Penticton and Surrey.
The housing would be dedicated for healthcare workers, whether it’s a physician, a local travelling nurse, a physician relocating for a permanent practice, a resident or an international medical student.
He noted the local physician recruitment working group that was established and has had three meetings so far, “and housing was one of the number one barriers that we’re having here attracting people to come down here.”
It’s a pretty small circle of healthcare workers currently who can come down and work for the day and go back home, he observes. “Having actual housing units here, I think we’ll be able to draw on a much, much larger circle in the Province, and maybe extend even out to Alberta,” the mayor said.
He added that in discussions with local ER physician, Grant Innis there have been doctors who have come to SOGH and were interested in working here “but there’s no place for them to stay.”
Housing, Johansen notes, is impacting “not only people trying to get into a home for the first time, but it’s affecting employers trying to employees, and it’s affecting our health care system.
“So this is not going to be the silver bullet that fixes everything, but it is something that that’s going to help make a difference.”
