CITY COUNCIL – Homeless shelters will be continued during coming winter
Homeless shelters set up to keep people out of the cold will be in operation again for the coming winter.
A report to Kamloops City council on the agenda for its regular Tuesday meeting (Sept. 12, 2023) confirms decisions to once again support the operation of temporary shelters at the Stuart Wood School gymnasium and the Yacht Club. The hope is to re-open them by Nov. 1.
In addition, the Mustard Seed and the Kamloops Alliance Church “are in conversation” about hosting an extreme weather response shelter at the church site. That could bring the shelter system capacity to 210 beds on a nightly basis throughout the winter, says the report, with 240 beds plus additional warming areas available on extreme weather nights.
In March of this year, approval was given to continue providing shelter at the Stu Wood site until Oct. 31, so that would simply continue through the winter months.
Preliminary data from the 2023 Point-in-Time Count in which homeless numbers are calculated suggests the unhoused population is up substantially from the 206 identified in 2021.
The City still hasn’t identified a site for what it refers to as a North Shore access hub.
“The access hub model would be a made-in-Kamloops solution that includes shelter services, social and health supports, storage for belongings, daytime amenity space, safe and supervised consumption, food services, hygienic facilities, and laundry facilities,” the report says.
The search also goes on for future shelter locations.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
The old empty boys and girls building built in 1978 beside the arena would be a great location except the city admin knocked the building down to create 30 gravel parking stalls beside the 1,000 paved stalls already there. But then again that building would have made a great sr centre, or wild fire hub or a community centre or a better location for a boys and girls club for kids rather than the place just off of the worst section of Tranquille Rd which they moved it to. Gee, I wonder why usage has gone down, who would have ever thunk it? To be fair, admin did this to make room for a $20million pool which council didn’t have the $ for and voted down. Do ya think it would have been a better idea of waiting to tear it down at a cost of 1/2 a million dollars before council voted on the pool proposal?
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MacPark is a great location for a north shore hub but it would take a great resolve to make it happen.
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