As overnight temperatures drop below zero, a Kamloops City Councillor is expressing frustration over the lack action on cold-weather shelters this winter.
Dale Bass says the City is still waiting to hear about operators for a 20-bed shelter at the Yacht Club and the 30 bed extreme weather shelter at the Kamloops Alliance Church on the North Shore.
“Everybody knows it gets cold around now and we’re sitting here waiting for BC Housing to decide if they like some of the ideas staff have floated by, which I also can’t talk about because I don’t have the details,” Bass said on NL Newsday back on Oct. 6.
“But [staff] have said, ‘hey, how about this? How about that? Hey, this is sitting there, how about we do that?’ and they’re still sitting there waiting and its almost the end of October.”
Bass says the City is hoping to avoid a scenario like last year, where the Kamloops branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association withdrew from temporary shelter operations just days before the opening date. That forced both the City and BC Housing to scramble to find new operators.
In the end, Out of the Cold stepped forward to run the Stuart Wood Shelter while The Mustard Seed took on operations at the Yacht Club. The Mustard Seed also ran the extreme weather shelter when the temperatures dropped to -10 C or below or if there was at least 5 cm of snow on the ground.
While Kamloops City staff say the 25-bed shelter at Stuart Wood School is expected to return winter, it too is awaiting provincial approval before it can expand past its current Oct. 31 closing date.
“City staff…received approval [from Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc] for the extension though the winter. That will now go to The Crown for approval [which] is really more of a simple procedural step given the number of times we’ve gone for an extension of Stuart Wood,” Social, Housing and Community Development Manager Carmin Mazzotta told Council in September.
In an email to Radio NL, BC Housing says it expects to release more details about winter shelters in Kamloops next week.
“The update will be about all shelters across the province and would include info on Stuart Wood if confirmed by the announcement date,” Shrief Fadl told Radio NL when asked if Stuart Wood in particular has been extended as the operator is in place.
“If not, we will be providing updates regularly throughout the season.”
“It is like all the parties – BC Housing, the agencies, the provincial government – all seem to be surprised when winter starts to come,” Bass, who has been calling for things to be done differently, added. “We’re going to have winter every year so maybe we need to change the way we deal with it provincial government, social agencies, city council, federal government.”
“[We need] everybody to come together so we don’t create this piecemeal, like ‘oh, lets fix this.’ Let’s have something in place that can be followed every year.”