File Photo (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By Curtis Goodrum

City Hall

After second year of missed housing targets, Kamloops council to pen exasperated letter to province

Nov 5, 2025 | 5:24 PM

KAMLOOPS — City of Kamloops staff presented a report on provincial housing targets at the regular council meeting Tuesday afternoon (Nov. 4). This is the second year in a row the city is below the housing targets. However, Kamloops council believes the targets set by the province are not realistic.

The City of Kamloops failed to reach provincial targets of more than 700 occupied units by the end of September. Eric Beach, a planning manager with the City of Kamloops, says a wide variety of factors are out of the city’s control.

“The US tariffs, federal policies around immigration, international students being less people, being permitted to come into the country,” said Beach. “Other factors with higher construction costs, have also led to developers not moving forward with a certain project.”

Kamloops council disagrees with how the province has set up its housing targets, calling it a waste of staff time and government overreach.

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Their metrics are wrong,” said Councillor Stephen Karpuk. “Not only that but Kamloops is not flat and as much as a tabletop exercise looks like, ‘Hey, we can have all this density,’ we have slope stability issues, we have all of these things that factor in that will never be able to get to those (targets).”

“The time and capacity that’s been taken from your department trying to fulfill these wildly unrealistic expectations of the ministry is so discouraging,” added Councillor Katie Neustaeter. “Well, our developers are saying we need faster processes. We need to move it through the pipeline faster, all of those things. Meanwhile, our staff are tied up in useless red tape that’s delivering, as far as I can tell, nothing particularly helpful.”

“It’s unfortunate you have to do this report year after year,” said Councillor Kelly Hall. “I personally don’t put a lot of merit into it myself. I look at it and I think we’ve done a good job as a community in building.”

“We missed our target last year, as well and we sent all that stuff into the ministry,” noted Councillor Dale Bass. “And what did we get back? ‘Gosh, golly. Work harder.’ Or did we get the usual reply from the government, which was noted and filed?”

Council agreed that, along with its target housing report, a letter should be sent expressing frustrations with the plan and requesting for a meeting with Housing Minister Christine Boyle.