The Executive Director of Ask Wellness says a pair of pop-up warming shelters, at Spero House and Crossroads Inn, have been very well used.

The two centres were opened over the weekend in anticipation of the colder than usual weather. Bob Hughes says we found ourselves in Kamloops with nowhere for people to go even during the day. “So, with the Mustard Seed being closed, and that was a scheduled closure for Sundays and Mondays, we recognize that as we go out there first thing in the morning that we had a whole bunch of folks that literally had nowhere to go right off the bat at 9:00 in the morning.”

“The Mustard Seed was fully utilized, they had some turn-aways that were sent to us. We had 18 people at Crossroads and 11 people at Spero, the building on Tranquille. So it just kind of speaks to the desperate need of people for shelter and even a warming site.”

Hughes says there was a clear need to have a place for people to go if the Mustard Seed and Emerald Centre were full and also somewhere for people to be inside during the day.

“While we don’t have mats or beds at either Crossroads or Spero, we at least had a place for people to warm up in comfortable seating, some food and basically just getting people in from the cold. I mean it was a real rudimentary response”

The two temporary warming centres will be open until Friday. That’s when some warmth returns and temperatures are expected back in the single digits by the weekend.