The Village Model of Supportive Housing

Whereas The Village project in Duncan has received temporary BC Housing funding since 2021 to offer individual sleeping units, external communal spaces, and shared washroom facilities to 34 previously unsheltered individuals; And whereas the support services, programs, and opportunities offered at The Village, including improved physical and mental well-being, peer outreach, neighbourhood monitoring, improved sanitation, street clean-up, and incident response have made a positive impact on the residents and has helped to reduce the related community impacts in the surrounding neighbourhood; And whereas The Village model can be scaled to house approximately 50 individuals per site, many of whom may not transition well into a traditional multi-unit supportive housing building with individual kitchen and washroom facilities in each unit; And whereas The Village model can be implemented quickly to house the growing unsheltered homeless population and address the acute related impacts in communities across the province, at a fraction of the cost of construction of traditional multi-unit supportive housing, and operated at a lower cost: Therefore be it resolved that UBCM urge the Province of British Columbia to implement The Village model, including sleeping units, with communal eating and gathering spaces and washroom facilities, and robust support services, as part of the supportive housing continuum and provide a mechanism for this model to receive continued funding from BC Housing.