Garth Gorrel and his wife, Debbie Houghtaling, have been camping along the Okanagan Rail Trail at the north end of downtown Kelowna, B.C., for two years.
Gorrel, a former steelworker in Kamloops, and Houghtaling, who used to do online clerical work for an Alberta-based janitorial service, both lost their jobs due to layoffs at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hoping to find employment, the couple relocated to Kelowna but had no luck. Unable to afford a rental apartment, they made the decision to shelter outdoors.
The “Official argument” seems to be “We put our homeless in a designated outdoor homeless zone.”
