The chair of the Build Kamloops Committee on Kamloops Council says he and the rest of council are “confused” as to why Kamloops was left out of the federal government’s Housing Accelerator program.

“We want to do this. We thought we put our best foot forward. Saw no reasons as to why we should not receive the funding,” said councillor Mike O’Reilly.  “You don’t have to look very far down the road in Kelowna, [where they] received almost twice as much as we had been asking for.”

Kamloops had applied for $15.6 million dollars from the $4 billion dollar Accelerator Fund to build 400 units.

Earlier this week, the federal government announced that all of its applications it was going to accept for the Housing Accelerator fund had been approved.

Of the 87 cities in BC that applied for federal funds to build housing, only 12 made the cut.

Mike O’Reilly notes Kamloops is one of just ten cities in BC under provincial housing mandates.

“To reach those targets that we’ve been told we have to do, frankly it can not happen without support from both the provincial and federal government,” said O’Reilly.

O’Reilly says they don’t know yet whether this will impact the provincial mandate they’re under.

“This was unexpected. But obviously we will have to work with the provincial government, and let them know the lay of the land and the situation that we find ourselves in. It’s frustrating when we’re trying to do everything we can as a community to make sure that we have affordable housing in Kamloops.”

Under provincial mandate, Kamloops is required to build over 42-hundred new housing units over the next 5-years.

O’Reilly notes City staff and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation are to meet this week to discuss the reason the Kamloops bid failed.