Frustration is high in the City of Kamloops where two winter shelters that were slated to open on Nov. 1 remain closed.
This as the temperature drops leading to a pair of makeshift shelters and warning stations for some of the City’s most vulnerable people – one at The Loop on Tranquille Road and the other from ASK Wellness, which will operate next week.
All this while the two official shelters – Stuart Wood Elementary and the Kamloops Yacht Club – lay empty, following a decision late last month by the Canadian Mental Health Association to withdraw its support to run the facilities.
Bryon McCorkell, the Community and Protective Services Director in the City of Kamloops, told NL News the lack of winter shelters in a number of communities in B.C. is tantamount to an emergency.
“The province needs to take responsibility for its side and I say that with a great deal of caution in that the people that we work with at BC Housing are fantastic staff members. They’ve done everything they can, but the system that they are working in is broken,” McCorkell said.
“It is a failure from the provincial side on getting enough housing whether its temporary shelter or otherwise to provide for a group of people who are going to be challenged very very severely in the coming days and months. What are we doing? Do we need to declare an emergency?”
That emergency declaration would be similar to what is done during fires and floods, with McCorkell wondering if that would lead to more action from the province
“It is a conversation that we’ve all had in that maybe we would be able to solve the problem and be able to do things that we don’t normally do,” he said on NL Newsday.
“This is a conversation that I know our new mayor is very concerned about and I know our new council will be as well and I think the phone call should be to our new premier and ask ‘what are you doing?’ because we are municipal staff and our social providers are standing here flat footed in a situation where the snow is coming down.”
McCorkell says the City has heard from Emergency Management BC, which is looking into creating emergency shelters, when it gets to -10 C or colder, though he notes that still amounts to the province downloading more onto municipalities.
“We’re all struggling to try and figure out what can we do because as I’ve said in past interviews, the City isn’t in the housing business. We try and support those that are,” he said.
“Perhaps the folks in Victoria where its plus 10 degrees should probably understand what its like to live in minus 10 on the street. It is just not right.”
