File Photo (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

By James Peters

Social services

Kamloops councillors hammer NDP government for inaction on sobering centre, day space

Feb 25, 2026 | 3:43 PM

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops councillors teed off on the province Tuesday (Feb. 24) in response to a report that showed a ballooning homeless population in the city.

The 2025 Point-In-Time Count presented to council showed an increase of more than 100 people experiencing homelessness since the population was measured in 2024.

The report showed 419 people without housing, representing a 341 per cent increase over 2014.

The eye-opening result had Councillor Dale Bass asking for updates on provincial commitments to local services, such as a long-promised sobering centre.

“Where are we on this thing? Because I’m tired. I’m not retiring from this job until we get it. Let’s put it that way,” said Bass. “That’s a threat to [Interior Health]. We have to have this.”

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A sobering centre is a medically supervised facility that allows people to safely return to sobriety after their most recent use of drugs or alcohol. It is seen as a healthier alternative to the ‘drunk tank’ in RCMP cells. Council has been advocating for such a facility for more than a decade.

“You referred to patience and how we have to have it – and I’m losing it,” continued Bass, referring to a presentation given Tuesday by Social, Housing and Community Development Manager Natasha Hartson. “I lost it in 2019 when [then-mayor Ken Christian] asked me to find out what was going on with the sobering centre we asked for in 2015. I lost in 2020 and 2021.”

In 2025, Interior Health reversed its opposition to providing such a facility in Kamloops, putting the sign-off back in the hands of Health Minister Josie Osborne. That sign-off has not happened.

In the meantime, Hartson told council people with complex mental health and substance use needs are being warehoused in shelters rather than offered treatment in healthcare facilities.

“There is a discharge plan from hospital to shelter. This is wild. We are putting people from hospital into shelters,” said Hartson. “We are putting people who are too complex for complex care into shelter. We are taking people from corrections facilities and putting them into shelter – and we are expecting folks who don’t have the training or expectation to manage all of that complexity.”

Councillors also lamented the absence of a day space serving the homeless population in Kamloops. Earlier this month, Deputy Mayor Nancy Bepple reported a positive meeting between council and BC Housing Minister Christine Boyle on the issue. However, neither a sobering centre nor a day space were included in the provincial budget that was delivered on Feb. 17.

“I think sometimes we lose sight of the fact that this shouldn’t even be a local conversation,” noted Councillor Katie Neustaeter, “when we look at the enormous time and effort and resources that are being put in at the local level when this is a collective failure of those who have been charged with this task of housing, of economy.”

Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson took the opportunity to repeat his call for an audit on BC Housing facilities in Kamloops.

The provincial budget included a $13.3-billion deficit adding to mounting provincial debt and what critics have identified as increasing taxes on services used by seniors. On Tuesday, Kamloops councillors wondered how all that spending wasn’t translating into addressing entwined crises in housing, health care, mental health and substance use.

“I’m so worried about our seniors who are going to get taxed out of their houses or out of their rental units, who are going to be the next wave of homeless people,” said Councillor Bill Sarai.

Several around the council table have previously identified themselves publicly as NDP backers. Nancy Bepple ran for the party in the 2017 provincial election, finishing second to BC Liberal incumbent Todd Stone in Kamloops-South Thompson. Bass joined the late NDP leader John Horgan at Thompson Rivers University for a cancer centre pledge during the 2020 election campaign. Sarai considered a run for the NDP during the 2024 provincial election but ultimately withdrew.

This week, at least two of them were heavily critical of the party.

“This government I supported for a number of years, I don’t recognize it any longer,” said Sarai. “The one segment of society they’ve always stood up for – it started with the working class – but seniors, people with disabilities or complex needs or homeless, they were always there championing that they were always going to be there for them and they aren’t anymore. That’s very troubling.”

“I’m sorry for the [tone],” Bass told Hartson, “but you almost had me in tears to begin with because this is wrong. This is just wrong. Someone asked recently, ‘What happened to the NDP government because they’re not NDP.’ I don’t know who they are anymore but they certainly aren’t the NDP I know and I grew up with. They’re just government.”