With the opening of a 50-bed shelter at the Kamloops curling club downtown, a temporary shelter on Royal Avenue will close at the end of this week.

The city’s acting Social and Community Development Supervisor, Ty Helgason, says that shelter space – which first opened in Nov. 2018 – was always meant to be temporary.

“Back then it was actually The Branch which was transitional housing, and then the Branch closed when Rosethorn House opened in January of 2020,” he told NL News. “Obviously, COVID struck in March of 2020, and we needed to reopen it, this time as a shelter when we thought we were done with it before.”

Helgason says the Royal Avenue location has served this community well, but he says it is now time to move on.

“Its always been the intention for Royal Avenue to be temporary and that’s why we’ve always been very intentional with the Royal Avenue shelter that we include the word temporary,” he added.

“It was never intended to be a shelter for this long. Its been great that this resource was available to us, but once the curling club is ready that will be it, in terms of our usage of the Royal Avenue location as a shelter.”

In addition to the curling club, the Canadian Mental Health Association and BC Housing will be opening a 20 shelter beds at Memorial Arena after the signing of a new lease to use that space.

Both of those locations will be open until March 31.

Shelter Beds Available as Cold Weather Approaches

Meanwhile, after a relatively mild stretch of winter weather to begin 2021, its about to get cold in the Kamloops area, according to the latest Environment Canada forecasts.

Ty Helgason says there are shelter beds available for people if they’re looking for a warm place to sleep.

“We’ve currently got space for about an additional ten people per night at Royal Avenue until it closes [later this week]. We’ve then got an additional ten beds set up in the flex space of Rosethorn House and we are really putting the rush on getting the curling club ready downtown,” he told NL News.

Helgason though says for the most part, shelter beds in Kamloops have been close to full this winter.

“On a nightly basis, the Emerald Centre shelter is usually full or very near full, and that’s 40 units there, and then the 20 mats available through the Mustard Seed’s mat program are typically full every night. The 25 beds at the Royal Avenue are typically used with about ten left there.”

“The units that we did lose with spacing and barriers and everything like that out of Emerald Centre and out of the Mustard Seed mat program, were replaced by the Royal Avenue Shelter, which will in turn be replaced by the space at the Kamloops Curling Club.”

Environment Canada is forecasting a low of – 7 C tonight, and -11 C tomorrow night, with daytime highs around – 5 C over the weekend.