The high cost of housing in Kamloops is making it difficult for some city departments to attract employees (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Stephanie Swensrude

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Housing prices make it hard for city to attract out-of-town talent to Kamloops

Jan 21, 2022 | 4:25 PM

KAMLOOPS — The housing crunch in Kamloops has left some city departments with staffing shortages as they fail to attract talent from other cities.

The development and engineering department lost six of their 12 employees over the last few months. Now, the high cost of living in Kamloops is making it hard to find replacements.

“We have people that we may offer a job to, and they’re keen and then they look at the real estate and they say ‘we’re out’,” said Marvin Kwiatkowski, director of Engineering, Development and Sustainability.

Kwiatkowski says the department needs a lot of staff to deal with the number of applications they receive.

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“If you’re looking at around 250 development applications in a year, you need a fair bit of staff to keep those moving along to sort of meet some deadlines,” he said. “And that affects the developer as far as timing, financing, time of year [and] getting projects in the ground.”