‘We want to come back home’: Residents of Kelowna building look for help as support wanes
Global News
Residents of the evacuated Hadgraft Wilson Place have been living in Okanagan College's new dorms. They are now slated to leave and many don't know where their next real home is.
Amanda Harrison hasn’t been able to sleep.
She tosses and turns, lying awake and wondering if she’s going to get a call saying she will be able to keep a roof over her head.
The daytime isn’t much better.
“There are days where I sit here and just want to cry … because I didn’t ask for this,” she said.
Harrison, along with 83 other residents who called the now-evacuated Hadgraft Wilson Place home, lived in Okanagan College’s new dorms for the last several months. They are now slated to leave and many don’t know where their next real home is.
Their stay at the dorms was always a stopgap measure, in a city where housing is hard to come by. It gave them a more steady place to call home than the hotel rooms they were bouncing to and from for several weeks, but it never really properly met the needs of a close-knit community that struggles with a wide array of challenges, both physical and cognitive.
It was also far from the community they lost at Hadgraft Wilson Place, a space the Pathways Abilities Society sought after for decades to help a population in need of affordable supportive housing find independence.
It was just over a year old when nearby construction of a tower for UBC Okanagan rocked its foundation, sending cracks up the walls and residents from their homes with little notice and, for a while, few possessions. When and if they ever get to return home remains to be seen.
