Kamloops staff believe more residents are living in unaffordable housing than they were five years ago.

Community planning supervisor Jason Locke says most recent data, from 2016, said 23 per cent of residents were paying more than 30 per cent of their gross income for housing, which by definition is considered unaffordable. That included 14 per cent of homeowners and 47 per cent of renters.

“We don’t have the new data for 2020, because the Census data will be coming out in 2021. But as noted in the council report, once the Census results are revealed, we suspect that the level of unaffordability may in fact be higher,” Locke says.

“Now again, keeping in mind, this is part of a larger, provincial-wide issue, with 28 per cent of all B.C. households reporting living in unaffordable housing in 2016.”

At 23 per cent of all residents living in unaffordable housing, that figure from 2016 was actually an improvement from 2011 and 2006.