Construction of the new shelter on Eighth Avenue is moving ahead on schedule, says Port Alberni Shelter Society executive director Wes Hewitt.
After spending a few weeks behind chainlink fences carving out the footprint for the new shelter and modular housing units, construction crews have started building forms to pour the foundation for the main building.
The modular homes are being assembled in Cumberland at the Muchalat Group’s manufacturing plant. “They’re all framed. They’re just finishing up the drywall and taping,” Hewitt said.
The modules will start being assembled in mid-September. They will be trucked to the new shelter site from Cumberland, he explained.
The plan for moving into the new shelter was originally for the first week of December, however, Hewitt said the shelter society has decided to delay that until the first week of January due to the Christmas holidays.
“We don’t want to move people during the Christmas holidays,” Hewitt said. “We have staff that take holidays at that time and it’s not really a time we want to uproot people and move them.”
Once they make the move into the new shelter, the old shelter will be closed and the society “will begin populating with more people in the additional space,” he said. There is no waiting list for the modular homes at the moment, but there will be, he said.
“There’s a process BC Housing has in place that we will be following when it comes closer to the time.”
Like us on