File Photo (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Victor Kaisar

Envision Shuttle Funding Sought

CMHA Kamloops looking for funding options to expand Envision shuttle

Nov 21, 2024 | 12:11 PM

KAMLOOPS — The Kamloops branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) is trying to secure funding to restore its Envision Shuttle Service to a 16-hour-a-day program.

CMHA Kamloops Executive Director Alfred Achoba says the shuttle — which transports people on the street to shelters — is currently only operating for eight hours a day.

“With Envision just running from 4:00 p.m. to midnight, the number of clients we’re able to move into shelter is really, really impacted because we have to worry about staff safety whereas when we had the 16 hours of funding and two staff per shift, it made it easier to triage and get people indoors,” Achoba said.

“On one of our busy nights, we move almost 50 to 60 individuals during an eight-hour window into shelter. If we had cold weather now and we had 50 beds open, we’re not able to do that with current capacity and so the goal now is to see how we can expand to be able to meet the increasing demands we’re seeing.”

Achoba told CFJC Today that CMHA Kamloops is hoping for under $100,000 in funding, most of which will go towards hiring a second driver.

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“We’ve been working with the city and BC Housing to see how we can secure funds on both ends, and whether its a partnership that would bring funding for us or whether its just BC Housing or the city, we’re still waiting on what that would look like,” Achoba said.

Natasha Hartson, the City of Kamloops’ Community and Emergency Supports Supervisor, told CFJC Today that the Envision Shuttle is currently funded by the Reaching Home program, a federal fund that is administered by a local community advisory board.

CMHA Kamloops will be getting $215,000 to operate the shuttle between 2024 and 2026, in part because the grant program was oversubscribed.

“And so the funding review committee made the decision to fund Envision at the level that they funded it at, and [Achoba] was able to make his operational decisions which would have been eight hours per day,” Hartson said. “It wasn’t as though the group cut the funding, it was that they approved it to that amount.”

Hartson says CMHA applied for Reaching Home funds after a provincial government grant that it previously accessed was discontinued.

“The Envision Program itself started actually through a different funding source,” Hartson added. “It was provincially funded and in the last round that funding no longer existed and so the Envision program applied to the Reaching Home portfolio and this is what the Reaching Home portfolio approved.”

In all, the City of Kamloops will be distributing just over $1.8 million in Reaching Home funds to local organizations between 2024 and 2026.

“The grant applications received totalled over $4.7 million, and the available funds for projects were just over $1.8 million, leaving a shortfall in funding requests of over $2 million,” Hartson said in a June 2024 report to council. “The Funding Review Committee had to make some hard decisions and not all projects were funded or received their full funding request.”

“This significant funding deficit indicates there is a growing need for more investment in programs and services for our community’s most vulnerable.”