Kamloops is not immune to homelessness and one business leader in our city thinks in some cases can be prevented before people hit rock bottom.

While appearing the NL Morning News, Jeremy Heighton, Executive Director for the North Shore Business Improvement Association, said we need to change the way we approach the problem. “The challenge for us as a community is to stop, not necessarily stop but to shift our focus from saving peoples lives on a daily basis to preventing addiction, to preventing homelessness and providing the treatment services to allow people to regain their lives so it’s a real delicate balance at all times to find the right mix.”

Heighton also said there’s a common thread for at least half of the homeless population. “The challenge is that there are a lot of people who struggle every day with significant mental health issues, significant addiction issues.”

“There’s an article in the Lancet last week, it was talking about how fifty percent of street entrenched individuals have a traumatic brain injury. You know, there’s so real defined challenges there that we have to get ahead of.”

He also thinks people should have access to treatment before they hit rock bottom. “There a some deeper traumatic scars for many of these folks which are very difficult for them to heal but we have to have the mechanisms in community to allow them to try and heal because if we don’t have those mechanisms then we’re just bandaiding the problem, we’re just moving it around from street to street and that’s not to way to get in front of it, that’s not the way to do it.”