FILE PHOTO

(LEVI LANDRY / iNFOnews.ca)

B.C. Housing says the mayor of Kamloops has a pattern of showing up at its facilities unannounced.

A B.C. Housing staff member is currently drafting a letter to the mayor about the "pattern" and reached out to the City to find a way to arrange official site visits, according to an email from B.C. Housing to City staff.

Hamer-Jackson said he was not simply visiting the site when he arrived at the Canadian Mental Health Association-operated Moira House on Kingston Avenue.

He, along with councillors Stephen Karpuk and Kelly Hall, were with a homeless man who uses a wheelchair, trying to find an accessible shelter for the man.

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"So we went around to different places to see if they had wheelchair (access)," he said. He called an employee from outside the facility.

"(She) said they were full and then we left."

He went to the gated access and called an employee from there, rather than actually entering the property. They were turned away.

"I guess we're not supposed to get people into shelter in this province," Hamer-Jackson said.

It was one of a few shelters they tried on Sunday morning, Nov. 13.

At Merit Place, a shelter at the former Greyhound bus station, they were also turned away.

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"We got zero. 'We can't tell you anything," Karpuk said. "It was pretty cold that day and we were inquiring how much room is there."

It became a pattern at the shelters they tried to bring the man.

"They have a contract to provide a service. They don't necessarily have to answer to us, but I think it would have been nice for transparency."

B.C. Housing leases shelters to service providers like Canadian Mental Health Association Kamloops to operate.

Mental health association executive director Alfred Achoba said he wouldn't speak to Hamer-Jackson's "pattern" of unannounced visits to housing facilities and shelters, instead deferring to B.C. Housing.

Hamer-Jackson also said this was the first time he's shown up at a shelter in his capacity as mayor, but he's done it in the past.

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Achoba did, however, say there are more appropriate ways to show up at one of their sites to tour the facility.

"I would echo (B.C. Housing) that there are proper channels to follow when you want to visit the sites," he said.

As for finding housing or shelter for any one citizen, he said it's not as simple as showing up at the door and there is a "triage" system in place to find the right space, citing proximity to family or a specific pharmacy, for example.

The shelter supply of 210 beds this winter isn't meeting the demand as the weather gets cold. Out of the Cold Kamloops, operating the Stuart Wood shelter, has already welcomed nearly two dozen people into its warming space on some of the coldest nights this winter after its beds were filled.

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