Published: June 19,
2009 6:00 AM
Updated: June 19, 2009 10:39 AM
If it were not for New Opportunities for Women (NOW) Canada, cancer survivor Eunice Hiebert can’t imagine where she would be living.
She moved here from Grand Forks, needs to be in Kelowna and cannot afford rent on the money she earns.
Yet members of this Okanagan community who have supported her so completely over the course of this past year are now preventing the non-profit organization which runs her housing complex from building more facilities for women like herself.
One week ago, a group of Pandosy business owners filed a lawsuit trying to block the City of Kelowna from leasing out a municipal parking lot to build new NOW Canada supportive housing apartments.
All of the zoning is in place and city council has approved a development permit for the 39-unit building.
But the business owners’ lawsuit has shelved the project indefinitely.
“If you think about it, (NOW Canada) is going to be taking another 30 girls or so and giving them a nice place to live. It’s so sad they’re doing this. It’s so heartless,” Hiebert said.
The lawyer for the merchants, and their previous spokesperson, have said they do not see the issue as being about the housing complex itself.
But Hiebert told the Capital News she isn’t buying that.
“I really and truly believe it’s not about the parking. It’s totally not about the parking. It’s about not wanting to have low-income housing in their neighbourhood,” she said.
“I mean, let’s face it, it’s where all the rich people live and they don’t want us poor people hanging around.”
Hiebert has nothing but praise for her neighbours in the current NOW Canada apartment complex where she lives, just off Harvey Avenue.
The organization runs a string of programs to help women, including providing safe houses to sexually exploited women, a unique assisted living facility where everyone from low-income moms to battered women piecing their lives back together to those transitioning out of the safe houses reside.
“It’s a lot of single women. Single women with kids and single women with kids and disabilities,” Hiebert said.
“They’re helping so many people out.”
The building planned for the Pandosy neighbourhood is an apartment complex very similar to Hiebert’s home.
Apart from the noise off Harvey Avenue, it’s a pretty peaceful place to be, she said, and the staff make it possible for her and her neighbours to live with far less worry.
“Every time I’m sick, they’re there helping me with groceries and bringing me flowers and just really, really taking care of the people that live there,” she said.
There is very little by way of supportive housing in Kelowna for women and the NOW Canada facility is one of a kind in that it’s also a safe facility with staff and cameras in the hallways.
Jessica Donaldson also lives in the house and volunteers doing outreach work downtown.
The one thing she hears from every woman she works with is that they need a place to stay, she said.
There are very, very few places where she can send them.
“Women don’t have places to go. Walking around and doing outreach, the only thing they say they need is a place to go.
“You can go to the shelter for 30 days—if there’s a bed—but what are you supposed to do afterwards? You just land up back on the street.”
In addition to the cameras in the NOW Canada building, the staff can help women reconnecting with society or starting out in a new community troubleshoot issues.
Donaldson wound up in the NOW Canada apartments on a referral from a friend in the Vancouver Police Department who helped her when she needed to leave Ontario.
She was pregnant and fleeing for safety reasons and NOW Canada took her in on a phone call.
A year and a half later, she’s in college, working, volunteering and enjoying being a mother, she said.
The staff have gone so far as to pay her entrance fees for college so she can get a fresh start and she’s built a strong ties in the larger community.
Watching the Pandosy fight, she is disheartened by peoples’ priorities.
“They’re losing more customers than they would gain by having the parking. It’s really sad…I know a big network of people and none of them will shop there anymore and they used to,” Donaldson said.
The writ of summons filed in the Supreme Court of B.C. to begin the suit states the entities suing the City of Kelowna include: Hector’s Mexican Restaurant Ltd., Canada West Realty Ltd., Palo Solara Holdings Inc., Dr. J.D. Chambers Opthamalic Services Inc., Paul Leinemann Construction Ltd., Ronald Robertson, CGC Holdings 1985 Ltd., Foxglove Enterprises Ltd. Wayne Holdings Ltd., Carol Halton and 468915 B.C. Ltd.
Both a city employee and the lawyer for the group said they were hopeful the two sides could come to a resolution before court appearances are necessary when interviewed this week.
The writ states the parking lot in question was a central feature of a parking plan established by the city as “a key component of the revitalization project” the city and Pandosy business owners engaged in during the late 1990s to develop the small shopping district into the colourful collection of shops thriving there today.
Tom Smithwick, lawyer for the group, will argue the city has “acted in a procedurally unfair manner and contrary to the legitimate expectations of the plaintiffs” by altering the zoning in the area since that revitalization occurred and by failing to hold public hearings on whether the parking changes and zoning changes need for apartments to be built should be made.
The document states the business owners “will suffer significant damages both in terms of loss of business as well as a decrease in property values” should the parking spaces in question be moved to an alternate location as planned.
It states the group had “the legitimate expectation that they would be involved in any major changes to the South Pandosy area” due to their long-term involvement in the redevelopment process, now over a decade ago.
jsmith@kelownacapnews.com
