HAMER-JACKSON – Let’s be clear; social disorder is not the same all over

This is the address delivered to the annual Kamloops Chamber of Commerce dinner at Thompson Rivers University on Thursday, March 14, 2024 by Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson.

By REID HAMER-JACKSON
Mayor, City of Kamloops

FIRST OF ALL, I would like to say I was working on a slide show for you all that showed the REALITY of the STREET DISORDER in our community along with some of our SUCCESSES.

I was unable to bring it forward as a City staff member and an elected official informed myself and others that there is a policy that prevents the mayor of today to carry that on his own direction. So now we have the City of Kamloops logo to show that was provided, as that is what I was told I could only show.

Can you imagine not having Thompson River’s University in our community? The economic impact that TRU has had on our community is immense, never mind the entertainment in all aspects.

I believe we should be continuing to build a strong relationship for our younger generations to be more successful. I also believe this council is in agreement; we need to continue to build bridges.

More importantly to build sustainable community partnerships — to view Kamloops.

As a “University City” like TRU, our partnership with Kukpi7 Casimir and our First Nations members is a source of pride working together.

I would like to thank Marvin Kwiatkowski, City of Kamloops Development Engineering & Sustainability director, for all the work he and his staff have done providing me with some 2023 stats.

We are seeing a decline in overall building numbers in 2023 from 2022 due to economic reasons, including interest rates.

Thinking positively and hopefully things will change for the better. We issued 6,449 total business licence applications that you can do online and this also should help to streamline the process.

As a council we are in the business of approving projects as best we can. Based on our council’s strategic plan, we have to work harder as safety and security is critical. We have to prioritize for the safety of our community, for residents, business and visitors.

Every town hall meeting has been about safety and crime, addictions, mental health and homelessness reflects all of our concerns. That is the focus of the majority of our citizens that show up to our town hall meetings.

It all started for neighbours and I over 10 years ago when a non-profit agency came to us to develop the facilities across the street to be turned into a shelter for “women and children fleeing violence.” We supported that concept.

However, nothing close to what was proposed has occurred. Moving forward the housing minister, Selina Robinson, in 2018-2019 proposed wrap-around services. A number of facilities on the West Victoria and North Shore corridor were to be used to house the homeless and in theory for harm reduction/ substance use facilities.

Throughout the years following, social housing has been redirected to a number of locations both temporary and permanent including the curling rink, Memorial Arena, the bus depot in Sahali and various places on West Columbia Street and Valleyview, just to name a few. These places have exasperated police, fire and ambulance with huge numbers of calls and continue to overwhelm Royal Inland Hospital emergency rooms.

At the same time, other areas of the community including Juniper, Barnhartvale, Rose Hill, Dufferin, Westsyde, Dallas, Rayleigh, Pine Ridge and Sun Rivers have received limited numbers of these calls.

LET’S BE CLEAR, WE CANNOT SAY IT IS THE SAME ALL OVER. We are at a point where we need our facilities to become more accountable. As an example, other places deal (example Orca House) with this issue in significantly other ways.

I believe that we need to advocate to get specific housing operations and shelter operators to be more accountable to the clients and the residents of their surrounding communities. We need to advocate for our non-profit social agencies to separate the issues of harm reduction and recovery, as well as house appropriately.

At present we have approximately 15 harm reduction facilities that focus on shelters, motels and supportive housing. We have very little in the area of RECOVERY. We need to be able to transition individuals from shelters and support facilities to long term recoveries. We need 24/7 outreach workers to reduce stress on the RCMP, fire department, ambulance services, security services and our CSOs, emergency rooms and hopefully significantly reduce our overdose deaths. This will also reduce our tax burden.

We must change our focus to RECOVERY FOCUSED PROGRAMS, FACILITIES and ADVOCATE for more SUPPORT in our HARM REDUCTION FACILITIES. Also to help the people who are struggling with addictions and MENTAL HELATH ISSUES.

I believe these initiatives along with an easy process allowing people that want to go home to their home communities can do it with much more ease. I believe this will help to get to the root cause of the issues many of us face in Kamloops today.

We have much work to do in this area. Let’s work together and partnership.

Thank you.

Reid-Hamer Jackson is the mayor of Kamloops.