Image Credit: CFJC Today / Kent Simmonds

By Jill Sperling

Y Dream Home Lottery

Tickets for abbreviated Y Dream Home Lottery go on sale Tuesday

May 3, 2021 | 4:17 PM

KAMLOOPS — The 2021 Y Dream Home is nearing completion, but even before every detail is in place, tickets will go on sale to win the brand new house in the Oak Hills neighbourhood of Westsyde.

“This home is just under $720,000 in value, it’s about 2,200 square feet,” said Y Dream Home Lottery spokesperson Bryce Herman. “It’s got some amazing technology in it — as a matter of fact it’s got a heating and cooling system that is not a traditional furnace. Don’t ask me how it all works, because it’s beyond my pay grade, I don’t know how it all works, but I can tell you it’s pretty amazing.”

Work began on the home last summer, an opportunity for TRU Residential Construction students to get some hands-on experience.

But, with pandemic protocols and shipping delays caused by the blockage of the Suez Canal, construction was slightly delayed. And, the lottery itself is starting later than usual.

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“Certainly there’s been an appetite, we’ve certainly had a nudge nudge, when is this thing going to go? And we were a month later getting into the market than we traditionally have been for the last 24 years,” Herman said. “It was a bit of a change for us too to be pushing this far into May before we actually start.”

The Y Dream Home Lottery is a fundraiser for the Kamloops YMCA-YWCA and its programs.

“In the last few years it’s been a growing amount. All of our gaming activity in 2020 was around $728,000,” said CEO Colin Reid. “Our target for 2021 is to be over $1 million in net revenue. It’s about 20 per cent of total volume of revenue for the Kamloops Y. But in this case the net dollars are the things that make the difference, it allows us to do the things that we do.”

Reid says the lottery funds help pay for everything from utility bills and maintenance costs to supporting youth and young family programming. This is especially useful during a time when other revenue streams have slowed to a trickle.

“All of the regular activities that we’ve done at John Todd have been suspended because of health orders,” Reid said. “If you take that and you look at our downtown location, our Battle Street location, we’re trying to run that building on 40 per cent of normal volume.”

The Y is hoping for another sellout of the lottery, and this year there is some additional incentive to buy a ticket.

“This is our 25th anniversary, so it’s our silver anniversary,” Herman said. “We wanted to do something different. So, what we’ve done, is we have built 25 bonus prizes that all have a value of a minimum of $2,500 or more. So, all of our partners and our sponsors have collectively gotten together, worked with each other and we’ve built these amazing prize packages.”

Tickets go on sale at 9:00 a.m. Tuesday.