Having lived beside an assisted-living project for a year, I can tell it is less than ideal.
We bought a mobile home in Dauphin Park about three years ago and really enjoyed it, apart from a little street noise which you got used to. At the time we didn’t know that the motel next door, the Bel-Air, was in the process of being acquired by B.C. Housing for assisted living clients.
B.C. Housing had an open house on-site and extolled the virtues of their idea. Most of us in the park didn’t mind as we realized people have to have somewhere to live. That hospitable feeling didn’t last very long. Soon the screaming, fighting, ambulances, police cars started showing up regularly and it was downhill from there. Open drug deals in a car park across the street, drug drop-offs and pick-ups in broad daylight.
Then the stealing started. Stuff disappearing off the sundecks sheds being broken into, residents told f—- off when confronting offenders, cars being scraped with keys. I complained to the manager and was told ‘I’m a one-man band and I can’t do everything.’
So, when I read stories about Penticton being accommodating to B.C. Housing I really cringe because they (B.C. Housing) sure didn’t deliver to the residents of Dauphin Park.
With the Bel-Air, Super 8 and any other properties B.C. Housing get their hands on Penticton is turning into the armpit of the Okanagan.
So, Penticton council and mayor, do your homework a little more diligently before subjecting people to your damning decisions.
Tom Keogh
Penticton