Photo: Kristen Holliday

VisionQuest's 20-acre recovery facility, located in Logan Lake.

Kamloops businessman Reid Hamer-Jackson estimates over 40 people have taken him up on his offer to tour VisionQuest, an addiction recovery centre near Logan Lake.

Hamer-Jackson, owner of Tru Market Truck and Auto Sales, located on West Victoria Street, said he has organized about a half-dozen trips to the facility, inviting local politicians, city staff, and various organization representatives to hear about the centre’s recovery-based model.

After seeing the crime and social issues in front of his business get worse in recent years, Hamer-Jackson said VisionQuest’s recovery model is something he would like to see replicated closer to Kamloops.

“Instead of seeing 450 emergency calls across the street — I’m seeing them every day — let’s do something a little different,” Hamer-Jackson said, adding he doesn’t believe there are enough beds in the city dedicated to addiction recovery.

“Why don't we start spending more money on the people, and trying to get people well, than we are on properties — whether it be motels or everything downtown,” he said.

Hamer-Jackson said he has identified a property near Rayleigh, close to the city’s Tournament Capital Ranch, as a good potential place for a recovery facility.

He said the area was built with a septic system for future development, and is close enough to the city to be easily accessible, but far enough away that people using the facility would have “room to breathe.”

“These people need a place to be safe, and where they don't have to walk out their room and there’s the drug dealer in the next room. I think it would be really good for Kamloops,” Hamer-Jackson said.

VisionQuest’s 60-bed facility near Logan Lake is located on 20 acres of land, something executive Megan Worley said is important for many of their clients.

Worley said many who enter the recovery centre's programs are coming from closed or crowded spaces, be it a shelter or a jail cell — which makes the open space and fresh air stand out.

“I've heard it said that by pulling them out of society and taking them to a remote location it's actually segregating them, or even treating them like they are incarcerated when in reality, for them, it's a sense of freedom,” Worley said.

“We have all these things they can do that they couldn't do before. So that's the biggest perk. The second advantage is that it's really hard to leave. … The chances of them leaving voluntarily are fairly slim.”

Worley said their facility doesn’t force clients to leave once they have completed their program — which includes addictions and trauma counselling, and courses in anger management, life skills, parenting and healthy relationships.

She said once there is a deadline, people going through recovery programs can tend to worry about what happens next.

“One of the big reasons why we don't push them out is so that they don’t have that worry on their shoulder, so they can only focus on healing and recovery,” Worley said.

According to Worley, clients spend up to nine months in the first stage of their recovery, before they move to the second stage, which involves reintegration back into society.

Worley said VisionQuest is just one model of addiction services that works for some, but not everyone.

She said harm reduction services are necessary — “without harm reduction, half our guys probably wouldn’t even be here right now” — but so is funding for recovery beds.

"In the last 10 years, I think the focus has been more on harm reduction because the drug supply has become toxic, because there's so many more people in homelessness, so there's been a lot more focus on dealing with the instant symptoms and making sure that we keep people alive,” Worley said.

“The focus from the government has been less on recovery until recently, and they're starting to look towards us more now. …It’s just that they've been dealing with the immediate problem. And now they're starting to look towards what the solution is long term.”

Coun. Bill Sarai said has visited VisionQuest three times with Hamer-Jackson.

Sarai said he thinks it’s a “great program,” particularly noting how it doesn’t put a time limit on recovery.

“They let you stay there until you are strong enough mentally and physically to manage life back on the street again, or get you back home,” Sarai said.

“You can stay there for a year, they're not going to ask you to leave until you are absolutely ready to go.”

Sarai said he agrees with Hamer-Jackson about the potential to develop the property in Rayleigh to house a recovery facility, but said the idea needs to get buy-in from others first.

“There are other stakeholders in that land out there that have to be consulted, we need provincial and federal money to make this happen. BC Housing has to be on board. So yes, it'd be a great site if everybody supported it,” Sarai said.

Sarai said he believes there is a need for more recovery services in Kamloops, and wants to see the agencies in town, BC Housing and Interior Health work together to provide the necessary beds.

“These are all health issues. And in my opinion, Interior Health has dropped this ball more than once. They should be the leaders in this field and we should be helping them, and it's the other way around. We’re trying to come up with solutions, and they never come to the table with any assistance at all,” Sarai said.

In a council meeting on Tuesday, Sarai said Penticton is working with BC Housing to put together a 54-unit recovery house in the community, and asked staff if there were any plans to look into that type of service for Kamloops.

Carmin Mazzotta, the city's social, housing, and community development manager said they are having conversations with BC Housing about a "range of housing types," supportive, subsidized, and for different demographics.

Mazzotta said the Maverick, located in Aberdeen, has 12 intensive recovery beds, with programs available to help transition clients to longer term recovery and job readiness.

"I've had some recent conversations with a local non-profit that does have some smaller-scale, recovery-based units and are looking to work with BC Housing to identify some more of those," Mazzotta said.

"That's not a large scale project, those are smaller, that can really integrate into the fabric of the community, but would be recovery based."

Like Hamer-Jackson, Sarai said it’s important to take a different approach to addiction and recovery in the city.

“We can't keep building temporary housing and shelters and think the problem is just going to go away,” Sarai said.