OSOYOOS TIMES-December 16, 2009

By Paul Everest – Osoyoos Times

Anyone looking to get out from the cold in Osoyoos may have to depend on the goodwill of local residents or community organizations or rely on shelters as far away as Penticton.
On Dec. 9, the provincial government passed the Assistance to Shelter Act which allows police to assist homeless people to shelters when an extreme weather alert is issued for a community.
Local bylaw officers can also help someone find shelter under the act.
But since there is no official shelter in Osoyoos, police would have to take anyone needing refuge from frigid temperatures to shelters in Penticton unless a church, community organization or a generous individual came forth to help out, said Staff Sgt. Kurt Lozinski, commander of the Osoyoos-Oliver RCMP detachment.
If police found someone who did not have a home and needed shelter during an extreme weather event, they would ask the person to come with them to a shelter.
People have the right to refuse, Lozinski said, but police can use other laws such as the Mental Health Act or the Liquor Control Act, if they apply to a specific situation, to force someone to go to a shelter.
Police would not force someone “of sound mind,” he added, but they would encourage the individual to accept an offer of shelter.
Osoyoos does not have an Extreme Weather Response Plan and so cannot issue a cold weather alert.
The responsibility of issuing such an alert would therefore fall to the B.C. Housing and Social Development minister.
According to the Assistance to Shelter Act, the minister may issue an alert if, in his or her opinion, “extreme weather conditions exist in the geographical area and no Extreme Weather Response Plan applies to the geographical area.”
Local organizations or members of a community’s administration could also contact the minister if it was felt that an alert was needed.
The minister would then have to notify local police that the alert had been issued.
Last week, temperatures dipped to as low as -12.2 C in Osoyoos and there were three days, December 7, 8 and 10, where a low temperature of -10 C or colder was recorded.
However, leaders of nearly all the churches in town told the Osoyoos Times that no one had yet approached them for shelter now that the cold weather has arrived.
Pastor Phil Johnson of the Osoyoos Baptist Church spearheaded an effort last year to have the Cactus Centre off of Kingfisher Drive used as an extreme weather shelter.
That idea was nixed by the Town because the facility is not up to building or fire code to allow it to be used as an overnight facility.
Now he is in discussions with other church leaders to possibly use the vacant Desert Valley Care centre on Jonagold Place as a shelter.
They are looking for grants that could be used to operate the facility this winter as a shelter, Johnson said.
He said in the past, the requests for shelter he has received have come from people hitchhiking through town in the evening, with the call for help coming in when the person arrived at the Osoyoos fire hall or a local hotel.
He received between six and eight such requests last winter.
Several times he put people needing shelter up at his home, including Osoyoos’s Vince Sam.
Sam told the Times last week, however, that he has been renting a room at a house near Lion’s Park for the past three months.
If someone came looking for help now, Johnson said, he wouldn’t know what to do since he has no room at his house and the new Baptist church on Hwy. 97 is currently undergoing renovations and could not serve as a shelter.
Should someone come to him requesting shelter, Johnson said he would try to put the individual up in a cheap hotel.
He added it’s unfortunate police would have to bring someone all the way to Penticton for shelter and that any other options for getting out of the cold would have to come from the goodwill of residents.
The Town of Osoyoos has shied away from organizing any shelter plan for extreme weather events.
Instead, council decided earlier this year that if a community group wanted to put a shelter plan together, the Town and council would work with them and provide support.
Barry Romanko, the Town’s chief administrative officer, said on Dec. 11 that to his knowledge, no such effort has yet taken place.
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