A recent letter delivered to Kamloops Council by BC’s Housing and Municipal Affairs Minister is drawing the ire of the Mayor of Kamloops.

At issue for Reid Hamer-Jackson suggestions by Ravi Kahlon that it is “premature” for some on Kamloops council to a call for operational changes.

In that letter, presented as part of Tuesday’s open Council meeting, Kahlon suggests that Kamloops Council hold-off on calls for the 52 unit facility in the 300 block of Fortune Drive be shifted from a “supportive” to a “recovery” model of facility.

“Why are we continuing to open up these drug houses?” argued Hamer-Jackson in conversation with Radio NL.  “People are coming from all over.  I don’t need anybody to tell me that they’re not, because I walk the streets.  I talk to people on the streets, so I know they’re coming from all over, because they hang out behind my property [Tru Market Auto on Victoria St. West] and I sit and talk to them.”

In the letter to Kamloops Council, which would indicate that some on Council have expressed interest to BC Housing officials of having the project become a place where people who are struggling with addiction can go and become clean.

As it stands now, that project is earmarked as ‘sustainable’ housing, dependent on whether Kamloops Council is willing to approve a rezoning application, which is expected to be before Hamer-Jackson and the rest of Council during the March 4th meeting.

“The 4-storey building would contain 54 studio homes, plus outdoor gathering spaces and on-site parking,” stated BC Housing in a notification on the pubic feedback section of its webpage.  “BC Housing has applied to rezone this site from Residential 2 (R2) to Multi-Family 4 – Medium High Density (RM4). The site purchase is dependent on this rezoning.”

The Mayor of Kamloops suggests BC Housing should be realigning its priorities for the city.

“2021, we did a housing continuum report,” said Hamer-Jackson.  “I think that the housing that we needed for seniors, for low-income families and everything else…it was like 28%, 23%.   These aren’t exact numbers.  But for addiction, it was 3%.”

Hamer-Jackson also suggests a level of ‘overreach’ coming from BC Housing and Minister Ravi Kahlon himself.

“Mr. Kahlon, I don’t know how he knows our city better than we do,” said Hamer-Jackson.  “He just rolls into town every once in a while, and I think it time we push back a little.”

“It’s no different than the River Street… they’re [BC Housing] going to do over 50 units on River Street,” added Hamer-Jackson.

BC Housing is reportedly working on plans for a multi-unit transitional housing project on four plots of land across the street from Exhibition Park, and not far from the Kamloops Yacht Club, which has been used as a cold weather shelter the last two years.

The Mayor of Kamloops has also expressed interest in seeing a location on River Street — on the opposite side of the Yacht Club from the proposed BC Housing project — instead become an alternate location for the new Kamloops RCMP detachment.

Hamer-Jackson argues that location on River Street — or possibly on the so-called Columbia Precinct Lands at 6th and Columbia — would be better suited than building the new Detachment on the land next to the existing RCMP headquarters at 6th and Battle.

The RCMP project has already been approved by Council, with Hamer-Jackson opposing the process, arguing that — beyond the three years of disruption the project could bring to the RCMP and the surrounding area — that he would like to see the existing RCMP building saved.

Part of the approved project is to have the existing building, which was completed in 1990, taken down to make way for a parkade for the RCMP to utilize.

“I just think we need to save it as an asset of the City,” said Hamer-Jackson.

The Columbia Precinct Lands at 6th and Columbia have already been tapped for hundreds of units of middle-class housing through the BC government’s BC Builds initiative.