Another opens, two set to close in Kamloops shelter whack-a-mole

A Kamloops homeless shelter is opening on the North Shore for the first time in years, scheduled to house up to 44 people for nearly two years.

The converted RV dealership, opening a month late, also serves as the first ever shelter for local non-profit Ask Wellness.

“We’re nervous. We want to do it really well. We have vast experience delivering other forms of programming with outreach services, outreach, supportive housing, a recovery centre and some medical services,” Ask Wellness CEO Bob Hughes said.

“This shelter on the North Shore was something that was very important to us because this has been our home base since 2006, and so it felt really important that if it’s going to happen, it’s something we think we can deliver well.”

Dubbed “Pathways”, he said the key to its success is not only Ask Wellness’ expertise in supportive housing, but it’s also coordination with organizations around the city that will help its clients, citing regular police patrols to watch for “predatorial” behaviour in the area, and office space for an on-site Interior Health nurse practitioner.

“We’re very fortunate that we have some real pathways to wellness that we’re able to provide here,” he said.

The sentiment of partnerships with other groups was echoed by Carmin Mazzotta, whose department oversees the social service sector for the City of Kamloops.

“It’s a collective approach to support community safety for the clients, the staff and for the surrounding area,” he said.

Mazzotta’s department has been bringing people from social service organizations and BC Housing, along with business associations and Interior Health, together to coordinate future homelessness initiatives and the Pathways shelter is just the first project to open through the Kamloops Access Hub group.

“Fortunately we have good coordination among our non-profit partners and BC Housing to move folks from sites like this into housing. It really is great when you have an operator like (Ask Wellness) that has a real diversity of housing options, because not everyone’s going to need the same option and that’s the whole point,” Mazzotta said.

While phasing in the new shelter, work on other projects keeps going in the background. The next short-term challenges include two shelters expected to close in the spring.

The lease for Merit Place at the former Greyhound station in Sahali is set to expire on March 31, followed on April 30 by Out of the Cold’s shelter at the Stuart Wood School building.

“Until we have tackled the problem of homelessness substantively and housed the majority of these folks, we are going to need a site that’s a bit more long term on the South Shore as well,” Mazzotta said.

Both were announced in 2021 and the owner of the former bus station plans to build a car wash on the site once the shelter is gone. Stuart Wood, meanwhile, was initially only meant to stay open as a shelter until March 2022. It could be extended again, but it’s Crown land and would hinge on approval from the province and Tk’emlups. It’s not clear what replacement plans are in the works for the potential loss of at least 75 shelter beds.

Pathways will also be temporary, with property owner Arpa Developments planning to build a condo on the site. Mazzotta said the search for a viable property is difficult, but replacements of the temporary shelters with a permanent site is an important step to then potentially move on to a focus on drastically increasing the social housing stock in Kamloops.

“I would think we need to be adding to occupancy probably one social housing site that has 50, 60 beds per year to really start eating into homelessness, because we know shelters are not housing,” he said.

While the two South Shore shelters remain in a precarious state, the temporary Pathways shelter will not be the only first for North Kamloops in the coming years. Part of its model will serve to test what will eventually become the planned “community access hub.” Plans to buy a property for the access hub fell through last summer and the group shifted focus to the new shelter, but it will return as the committee look for a site expected to host shelter, food and social and health services open to anyone, not just its overnight clients.

For now, Pathways offers similar supports but only for its 44 clients. On Jan. 27 it will see its first 25 new residents.