Image: Kamloops’ first social-housing project, the ‘Old Men’s Home.’ (Kamloops Museum and Archives)

By Mel Rothenburger

ARMCHAIR MAYOR

ROTHENBURGER: The long and very sad history of homelessness in Kamloops

Jul 16, 2022 | 6:43 AM

IT MIGHT SEEM that homelessness is a relatively new issue in Kamloops but, in fact, it’s been around for more than 125 years — basically since the city was incorporated. Which raises the question: if the problem hasn’t been fixed in all that time, what chance is there of doing it now?

What lessons are there to be taken from history? In April of 2011, I was asked to speak about that history at a forum hosted by the Homelessness Action Plan, an initiative I’ll say more about shortly.

After the forum, I wrote a column summarizing my remarks. I began with the city’s first social housing project. In 1893, the year Kamloops was incorporated, the provincial government passed legislation for the construction of a residence for impoverished elderly men. Two years later, the Provincial Home for Old Men was completed in Kamloops. A rather stark name but an accurate one — the new facility provided a home for veterans of the gold rush who found themselves penniless, homeless and often in ill health. There were no government pensions or other social supports to lean on in those days.

Though the concept of the home was admirable, over time it deteriorated and got a reputation as a place for regular folks to avoid. Just as now, homelessness landed at City Hall in search of solutions. In the early 1900s, when a mother was thrown out of her home by her son, the council of the day created a pension for her.

Homelessness has all too often resulted in tragedy. In 1922, Thomas Hornby, homeless and in despair, left a note before drowning himself in the Thompson River.

One Man's Opinion

COLLINS: North Shore BIA working hard to develop a 'happening place'

5h ago

1000 Ways to Heal

1000 Ways to Heal: Moons

Dec 10, 2024

Question of the Week

Should Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson apologize or resign after it was found he breached a section of council's code of conduct for allowing false or misleading information to be communicated?

Dec 09, 2024

Skip ahead to this century and homelessness has remained contentious. There was, for example, the Victory Inn controversy over where social housing should be located. The election of the BC Liberals in 2001 brought in an era of cutbacks, including social services. “We have to focus on the core things — health and education,” MLA Kevin Krueger said at the time.

Part of the Liberals’ strategy was to offload social services costs to municipalities. Homelessness became much more of a municipal issue than it had in the past. Though Kamloops City council didn’t start handing out pensions the way its predecessor had done with the homeless woman at the turn of the previous century, it found itself struggling with the gap left by the new provincial government.

Tent cities began appearing on the river shore. As I noted in my speech to the HAP forum, teens would sometimes get together and go down to the river to “beat up a bum” for fun. In the spring of 2005, a homeless man died when his makeshift shelter at the river caught fire. Fences started going up to keep the homeless away from the rivershore. In 2006, City council began tearing down the tent encampments. Businesses built barricades in their doorways to stop the homeless from sleeping there. Panhandling became an issue.

In 2008, Henry Leland, a homeless man who had live on the streets of Kamloops for years, froze to death in a snowbank. Henry Leland House, a social-housing apartment block, is named after him. The B.C. Supreme Court ruled that the City couldn’t stop the homeless from sleeping in parks, so they were allowed to pitch their tents there between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. as long as they didn’t use the public washrooms. “At 7 each morning they were rousted out of bed by police and bylaws officers.”

The discussion of homelessness began going beyond providing shelter, and extended into the related issues of drug addiction, mental health and crime. Several groups began tackling the issue: Kamloops Active Support Against Poverty, the Kamloops Steering Committee on Homelessness, the Kamloops Community Action Team and Changing Face of Poverty. The latter group created the Homelessness Action Plan in 2010 with the ambitious goal of bringing all stakeholders together and ending homelessness in Kamloops by 2015.

I don’t know if anyone actually believed that was possible, but it was an honorable objective. So, a century after Thomas Hornby waded into the Thompson River and drowned himself, are we making progress, or are we farther away than ever from ending homelessness in Kamloops? You tell me.

I’ll end with a quote from the 2010 HAP strategy paper that I think sums up the challenge quite well:

“Homelessness. We see it in our parks, on our streets, and in our alleys. But these are just the public faces of the issue. Homelessness also hides in tents and beneath bridges; it sleeps in shelters and eats in soup kitchens. Sometimes it moves from couch to couch, bouncing between friends and family members. Sometimes homelessness is born in the middle of the night as a woman flees from violence, or on a cold afternoon after the EI has run out and the rent is late. Homelessness is also a constant presence in the minds of people for whom missing just one paycheque means regular visits to the food bank. “Homelessness affects all of us.”

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.