By Chad Klassen

ASK Wellness changes name of Mission Flats housing project after controversy

Nov 15, 2018 | 2:47 PM

KAMLOOPS — Days after a transitional housing complex on Mission Flats Road opened to 55 tenants, ASK Wellness has decided to change the name following some controversy in the community. 

The building was initially called Osborne House, honouring homeless Kamloops man Donnie Osborne who passed away in December 2016. However, after complaints from some members of the public about his criminal past, ASK Wellness thought it would be best to rename the building Mission Flats Manor. 

“He was known in this community as a bully and could be a predator around meeting his own needs over the impacts of other people,” said executive director Bob Hughes. “But it really started to change for us, as I myself received phone calls from a few community members. One man, in particular, really had a tremendous impact on re-thinking this strategy in his name.”

Hughes notes that Osborne turned his life around in the last decade before he died. The agency wanted Osborne’s transformation to be an example for other homeless people in Kamloops. Based on that, Hughes says it was a tough decision to drop the name.

“There was a segment of people that believe ‘no, lets hold true to this idea that it’s about people change and emerging and becoming good people.’ It was difficult, but in the end I think this is about the story of 55 people moving from being homeless or being in a tenuous housing situation and getting a place they can call home, and they can have food, and support, and medical care, and opportunities for employment,” says Hughes. 

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“This wasn’t about a fight in the community around the principles of rehabilitation.”

For every one of its affordable housing projects, Hughes consults with the ASK Wellness board of directors and staff for ideas on a name. Donnie Osborne was the first names that came to mind. Despite Osborne’s “checkered past,” Hughes says the 65-year-old came out of it a better person near the end of his life. Osborne became a protector on the streets while living at Henry Leland House during the last eight years of life.

“We just watched as he went from being homeless and being an angry, disaffected man and becoming somebody that would provide food for people off the street and would adjudicate some of the behaviours on the street of people who were harmful,” says Hughes. “It’s just the human condition that can move someone from a place of darkness to becoming someone who really believes in community and shows their warmth and their care. Donnie represented that.”

But when Hughes started to receive those calls from the public, including people on the streets that knew Osborne, he started to get a better picture of the harm he caused. ASK Wellness had an awakening and put its focus back on what they do: making a difference in the lives of people who are homeless and out on the streets.

“We see ourselves as very much an agent of inclusion and building communities, and so it seemed to me it was a tremendous conflict between his past, who we knew him, and while we want to tribute his ability to transform, we, more than anything, did not want to conjur up any kind of harmful memories for people who remember him in his time of darkness and time of menace.”

Hughes adds, “I’m apologetic that we hurt anybody for going with the name that we thought would have profound impact in a positive way. But instead, even for one person is enough to say that needed to change.”