A service group’s plan to establish a shelter in Delta for abused women and children has stalled after the provincial government slammed the door on their request for an operating budget, organizers said Thursday.
The Corporation of Delta will give a house to the local Canadian Federation of University Women’s project, and the federal government will provide $122,000 for renovations, said CFUW vice-president Kathleen Jamieson. However, the house and reno cash cannot be used unless B.C. Housing reverses its decision not to provide an operating budget of $500,000 a year.
“We’re trying to figure out some way of keeping the house,” Jamieson said, adding the money would pay for 24-hour staffing and other expenses at the new transition house. “We’re looking at any alternatives for operational funding.”
Jamieson said B.C. Housing officials told them no new funding for transition houses had been approved in more than 10 years. Unlike most cities of its size, Delta doesn’t have a facility for women and their children fleeing domestic violence, she said.
“Women stay in violent relationships because a safe and local place to live is not an option,” Jamieson said. “Or they have to leave their communities to go to a transition house, sometimes as far away as Aldergrove … children are uprooted from their schools. We want to keep people here, where they have some kind of support system; schools, doctors.”
Chimo Community Services, which runs a 10-bed transition house in neighbouring Richmond, has to turn away as many as 100 women and children every month, Jamieson said.
She said the new facility in Delta would be operated by Chimo, and could be open as soon as February if the money comes through. Jamieson said they have been working on their proposal since March, and Delta police weighed in to support their pitch to council. She cited statistics from Delta police showing spousal assaults on the rise, with reports to police of 98 such assaults in 2014, and 129 in 2015.
Jamieson’s group wrote directly to Housing Minister Rich Coleman Nov. 2, seeking his help in overturning the refusal.
Chimo housing manager Neena Randhawa said transition houses call around to each other, looking for spaces to meet daily needs.
“Right now our transition house is full, and I just got a call from a mom with two kids and she is from White Rock,” Randhawa said Thursday. “She doesn’t want to come all the way to Richmond. She works in Langley and the Langley transition house is full.”
Randhawa said transition house stays don’t usually last more than a month.
“Our goals are for them to be safe, to get them help with any restraining order, any police involvement,” she said. “More than that, it’s an education for (a woman) to know if this is the right decision.”
Jamieson also called Ravi Kahlon, the NDP candidate in the provincial riding of North Delta.
“It would be a shame to lose this,” Kahlon said. “I’ve spoken to other women’s groups, and you get the same thing back — Delta’s the only place that doesn’t have a home like this.”
Kahlon said provincial policy changes in 2008 have kept dollars from going into new transition houses. “It’s already hard enough for kids and the women, but pulling them out of their community makes it much harder.”
Ministry spokesman Darren Harbord said that while operational funding for the project is unavailable, capital funding may be available.
“We would be pleased to discuss a partnership with the organization,” Harbord said.
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