FILLING THE GAPS: Getting ready for closure of homeless support centre in Kamloops

Members of the community gathered at The Loop resource centre on the North Shore in Kamloops today to discuss how to support the homeless clients of the centre when it closes down next week. The property The Loop is on at 405 Tranquille Rd. was recently purchased and the centre has to be shut down https://infotel.ca/newsitem/controversial-kamloops-homeless-drop-in-centre-sold/it104294 , leaving roughly 100 regular clients who frequent the centre in immediate need of services. “We’re not going to solve the world’s problems today, we’re not going to talk about how we got here or where we need to go, we’re really going to focus very much on the immediate needs of the around 100 people that use these services every single day,” said community advocate Bonnie McBride who led the discussion. “These are important people in our community and we need to take care of them.” While the City of Kamloops has formed a committee that's planning to build an access hub for services for the homeless on the North Shore https://infotel.ca/newsitem/new-kamloops-homeless-drop-in-centre-soup-kitchen-needed-within-weeks-not-months/it104411 , it won’t open until winter. Concerned members of the community, social workers, representatives from other helping agencies including Out of the Cold, the downtown customer care and patrol team, ASK Wellness and the Food Policy Council were in attendance, along with a client of The Loop and former city councillor Arjun Singh who sits on the Access Hub Committee. Seats were full in the room with some attendees sitting on the floor while McBride led an interactive meeting, taking notes on a large pad of paper while topics like communication, food supply and delivery, storage for carts, laundry and washroom facilities and garbage pickup were discussed. “We have about seven services The Loop provides,” she said. “Some of the things we hear that are challenging when we start to see encampments are washrooms, garbage disposal, where you put your clothes.” The Loop has been its own hub on the North Shore for a few years where the homeless gather for meals, and access basic needs and transportation to appointments, medical services and overnight shelters. Also importantly, it is a place where clients can socialize and feel safe. “Mostly what we do is help people connect to other services that we don’t do," said The Loop founder Glenn Hilke. "We’re not a shelter, we’re not a housing provider, we’re not a medical community, so any of those other services that people need to connect to is what we help them to do. “We are in our own way the mini-hub in town, for those services we’ve talked about and the North Shore needs help. The Loop has been shouldering a lot of the burden.” The Loop centre is seen as a nuisance by some members of the public for the shopping carts, belongings and drug user hanging out it front of the building. It's generated frequent bylaw complaints which have led to thousands of dollars in nuisance fees from the City. “There’s a lot of work being done right now to try to identify locations, to try to identify funding for the work in the interim and a longer term solution,” Singh said. “What does it look like when we actually have a better, maybe a staffed resource. “There’s definitely magic involved with volunteerism but there’s also this concern around how its resourced to the level of acuity of the needs people have. If there was a place that actually was staffed and with a building, would The Loop now support that, would they want to do their own thing again? I think there's an effort to try to have something that’s much more resourced than this has been over time.” READ MORE: 'A spicy lady': Kamloops fire department celebrates oldest team member https://infotel.ca/newsitem/a-spicy-lady-kamloops-fire-department-celebrates-oldest-team-member/it104430 Hilke said he wanted to debunk the myth that the grassroots volunteer model is inadequate. “When we look at the spectrum of volunteers here some of them are social workers, some work in addictions, we have judges and doctors and people with lived experience equally as important with volunteering, so the capacity to run this place as we have for five years now is not the challenge in that model.” He said funding would be helpful, along with more visits to The Loop from other agencies and outreach workers to work with clients to help them access services like welfare. “This obviously is what the access hub is looking at as well, the A to Z of services under one roof, but the model is sustainable," Hilke said. "The volunteer driven concept is a good one because it brings the participation of the community, and the education people get from being here spills out into the community.” READ MORE: Kamloops council to expand tax exemptions for new rental builds https://infotel.ca/inhome/kamloops-council-to-expand-tax-exemptions-for-new-rental-builds/it104427 A lot of information was collected and connections with helping agencies were made to form a plan for filling the gaps that will be left when the centre closes down.  Singh said the City is working to get a location for the new hub as soon as possible. On the progress of the new Access Hub, Singh said there is an interim hope and longer term hope for a location.  "Where it's located in terms of maybe being not so visible but also accessible for folks is part of the conversation as well," he said. "But I think they’ll be more on that pretty quickly in terms of updates." 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