Kelowna's Homelessness Strategy
City’s role in addressing homelessness
Access to affordable, appropriate, and safe housing is essential for a healthy community. The City works in partnership with BC Housing, Interior Health and numerous social serving organizations to improve affordable housing options in our community, provide supports for those at risk to homelessness, and create pathways to stable housing.
Homelessness Strategy
The City’s Housing Action Plan, was endorsed by Council in January 2025 and provides a roadmap to address homelessness and other community housing challenges. The plan outlines key objectives and identifies high impact actions to achieve them.
- Two sixty-unit rapid safety net housing sites are operational (STEP Place and Trailside) and a third site on Appaloosa Road is in development.
- A purpose-built shelter is a Council Priority and the City continues to advocate to senior levels of government for a shelter with wrap around supports and graduated housing options.
- Enhanced coordination with BC Housing, through the Coordinated Outreach Circle and Shelter Coordinated Access and Assessment Table, both groups strengthen communication and collaboration between service providers to support people to transition out of homelessness, and resolving encampments.
- Co-creating a new “Outreach App” to facilitate coordination of front-line service delivery efforts.
- Working to improve access to services for those experiencing or at risk of homelessness by enhancing communication and collaboration among service providers in the Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS) project, funded by the Federal Government’s Reaching Home program.
- The City has extreme heat and extreme cold plans in place and continues to refine these plans to better support vulnerable residents.
- In 2024, a warming tent and a second warming bus (operated by Kelowna Gospel Mission) was added at the City’s Outdoor sheltering site to increase supports for those sheltering outdoors.
- The City is collaborating with United Way BC on the Social Response Task Force, joining partners in the social serving sector in developing disaster response plans with the goal of ensuring residents are supported during natural disasters or operational disruptions.
- In 2024, The City and Province announced a new Complex Care Centre on Pacific Avenue. This new site will offer 20 units of Complex Care housing and up to 20 units of supportive housing and will offer extensive supports for people experiencing concurrent mental health, substance use and housing challenges. Learn more: kelowna.ca/complexcare
The most humane and cost-effective strategy to address homelessness, is to prevent it by alleviating issues and challenges before they result in housing loss.
- Advocating to senior levels of government for improvements to discharge systems such as child protection, corrections, and health.
- Leading the High-Risk Vulnerable Youth (HRVY) project, a three-year community-based initiative focusing on preventing and intervening in gang involvement and exploitation of youth, in collaboration with Childhood Connections and Okanagan Public Schools.
- Exploring the creation of alternative community-based responses to police calls involving people in crisis.
- Expanding Community Cares project which provides employment opportunities for people with lived or living experience of homelessness. Since fall of 2024, the new peer support work opportunities program has resulted in over 1200 participant hours involving 100 people. Much of this work is centred around community clean up.
- Working with community partners to develop diversion programming and targeted prevention through the early identification of risk factors.
- Created a new funding stream within the City’s Community Social Development Grant to support existing treatment and recovery programs.
- In April 2025, Council, directed staff to prepare a bylaw amendment that will protect tenants who are being evicted due to new development. This new bylaw will require developers to submit Tenant Protection Plans that include financial compensation for evicted tenants such as moving costs and three months of rent or an equivalent lump sum payment.
- Engaging with key interested and affected parties to establish formal collaboration that supports alignment on actions, shared decision making, accountability, and measurement for safety net and supportive housing projects.
- Reviewing the density bonusing program to secure more community benefits and assessing the impact of changes.
- Kelowna’s Rental Housing Grant Program offsets Development Cost Charges (DCCs) for affordable rental projects, but the grant amounts vary based on the number of applications each year. The City is considering redesigning the program to use a sliding scale grant based on a project's affordability level and providing more certainty for housing projects.
- Assessing which measures will most support this action. Measures under consideration include internal timeline adjustments, addressing bottlenecks through pre-zoning and expediated approvals, and exploring the delegation of approvals from Council to staff.
About Homelessness in Kelowna
Types of homelessness
- Absolute homelessness refers to people who are living unsheltered or in homeless shelters.
- Hidden homelessness refers to those who do not have a stable or permanent place to live but are not living unsheltered or accessing shelter services. These people might be meeting their housing needs by couch surfing or sleeping in vehicles.
The top five causes of homelessness include:
- Household conflict
- Financial challenges (including housing affordability)
- Health issues
- Discrimination
- Abuse (e.g. intimate partner violence)
Dispelling common myths about homelessness
There are many myths surrounding homelessness and these misconceptions can contribute to stigma, creating barriers for people who would benefit from homelessness prevention services or services designed to help people transition out of homelessness.
Being homeless is dangerous and stressful and remaining on the street puts people experiencing homeless at increased risk of violence, theft, and exposure.
Despite the significant progress the City and our partners have made to address homelessness in Kelowna in the last couple of years, the number of people in need of shelter continues to exceed emergency shelter capacity.
When there is insufficient shelter space for those experiencing homelessness, the law in British Columbia prevents the City from prohibiting temporary overnight sheltering in parks and public spaces. However, the City can decide which parks or spaces to allow overnight sheltering.
The Provincial government determines the service model used to support those experiencing homelessness.
People without homes often spend most of their time and resources trying to improve their lives. While some work, many others face barriers that make it challenging to find or hold a job. Some include:
- Limited access to technology: Lack of access to computers and printers prevents people from being able to create resumes, fill out online job applications, or distribute resumes by hand.
- Lack of contact information for employers: Without a permanent address or reliable phone number to put on their resumes, employers have no way to contact applicants or stay in touch once work commences.
- Lack of access to essential items for work: Lack of financial resources can limit access to items needed secure and maintain employment: alarm clocks to ensure punctuality, showers, work-appropriate clothing and laundry facilities to maintain a presentable appearance as well as adequate nutrition to sustain energy throughout the day.
The City acts as a consistent convener and partner with social serving organizations and other levels of government to ensure people receive the help they need to overcome these and other barriers.
By working to address the root causes of homelessness and advocating for support services to help people transition into permanent housing, we’re improving social wellness for all in our community.
