City of Kamloops staff are recommending council approve a bylaw amendment formalizing the city’s legal responsibility to allow homeless people temporary shelter on municipal property.
Director of Community and Protective Services Byron McCorkell says, if approved by council, the move would set out where homeless can shelter, when, and under what rules.
“We have outlines basically using spaces where people have been known to use before as locations to overnight. So now we have kind of formalized what that looks like. So the amendment is just changing our existing bylaw to reflect what is needed in the community.”
McCorkell says homeless people would be allowed to set up tents to shelter overnight from nine p-m to seven a-m March through November.
“We needed to be clearer where we would, as a community, permit temporary overnight shelters for people who are finding themselves in a homeless situation. So really the amendment is reflective of that. We recognize that there is a responsibility there.”
He says if the amendment passes staff would pass on information to the homeless about things like low and high river positions for riverbank areas where they already shelter.