Coast Mental Health has been selected to operate 55 units of temporary modular housing on Royal Crescent in Maple Ridge.
Coast Mental Health, which also operates Alouette Heights – a housing and support-service facility for people at-risk of, or experiencing, homelessness, located on Brown Avenue in Maple Ridge – will manage the property and all operations, and will assess potential residents to ensure they will have the right level of support available on-site, according to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
Current residents of the Anita Place camp, including many seniors, will be given priority access to services and temporary housing, the ministry said.
“The Royal Crescent facility is anticipated to be ready for occupancy by fall 2018.”
Once operational, Coastal Mental Health will provide 24-hour on-site staff support to residents, including daily meal services, access to mental-health and addictions treatment and life-skills programming.
It will also operate a 24-hour contact line to answer questions and address neighbourhood concerns, and participate in a Community Advisory Committee, including community members and representatives from the municipality, local health authority and B.C. Housing.
Coast Mental Health will maintain the physical property, including landscaping, as well.
“The land on Royal Crescent is provincially-owned and will help address the need for more housing and support services for people living at the Anita Place camp, as well as others in the Maple Ridge community,” said the ministry.
The provincial government is also contributing $250,000 to relocate the former Mussallem residence on the property to the Maple Ridge Cemetery, for caretakers.
The four-bedroom house was built in 1936 by Solomon Mussallem, a former mayor who founded the long-standing auto dealership business, Mussallem Motors, the building for which burned down last fall.
B.C. Housing issued a request for proposal to select an operator for the temporary Royal Crescent site, and that process closed March 23.
In the last Metro Vancouver homeless count found 124 such people in at Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows, an increase of 48 per cent since 2014.