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Kamloops  

CMHA extreme weather beds averaging 60 to 90 per cent occupancy this winter

Shelter beds put to use

The Canadian Mental Health Association says it has been putting its extreme weather beds to use for the city’s vulnerable population as cold temperatures hit the region.

CMHA Kamloops executive director Alfred Achoba said the association operates 35 extreme weather beds across three sites in the city, and has been averaging 60 to 90 per cent occupancy.

“There are days where we’ve hit capacity in two of the sites, but we’ve never hit all 35 beds,” he said.

He said CMHA will coordinate with other shelter providers to make sure every bed is full before the extreme weather beds are activated — a new strategy this year.

The threshold to activate the extreme weather beds has lowered from -10 C temperatures to -5 C.

Achoba said the city’s been seeing extreme weather on and off since Nov. 22 and the lower threshold has kept the beds available more consistently.

“We may have slower months, but generally speaking we would activate more times than we activated last year when the extreme weather was done at the Alliance Church,” Achoba said.

He said the extreme weather beds were activated again last week, and expects the beds to remain available until nearly the end of the month — when temperatures are expected to become favourable again.

“We have a week where the first day might be slow because people are not fully aware that the bed is active,” Achoba said. “As the days go by, we start to see the numbers go up.”

He said he expects to see the number of days the beds have been activated in November to surpass last month.

Achoba said the majority of the clients who seek extreme weather beds are those who have mental health and addictions problems, but one of his goals is to make a case for those who have lost access to shelter services.

“We’ve also seen individuals with problematic behaviours, for example fire starters and individual who struggle in communal living environments,” he said.

“As we demonstrate success using those extreme weather beds, we are able to also give them another shot at coming to shelter.”

Without a day space for people to stay warm when the sun is up, Achoba said the city has secured funding for its Envision Shuttle through Emergency Management BC.

The shuttle will now operate from 8 a.m. until 12 p.m. when temperatures are below -5 C, in addition to its regular hours from 4 p.m. until 12 a.m.

“We're still working on a day space, there is concern now that as temperatures are dropping, there’s need for people to go into a warm location during the day,” Achoba said.

“We don’t have that yet, so in the interim this is the solution we all came up with."



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