The Yacht Club Shelter will provide 20 beds run by the Mustard Seed (image credit - CFJC Today)

By Michael Reeve

WINTER SHELTERS

More than 300 shelter beds ready for the chilly Kamloops winter ahead

Oct 22, 2025 | 4:13 PM

KAMLOOPS — With overnight lows forecast to dip into the low single-digits this weekend in Kamloops, the city, along with numerous community partners, are gearing up to operate winter shelters.

The primary winter shelter this year will be at the Yacht Club, with extra beds also coming to Stuart Wood and the Olive Branch. Like last year, there will be no single extreme weather shelter, with existing shelters throughout the community set to expand when the criteria is met.

As it currently stands, the city of Kamloops has approximately 258 shelter beds. This winter that number will expand by 40, thanks to the winter shelter beds opening.

“We do feel better, of course, with having these additional shelter beds, but it is a transient population,” said Ty Helgason, City of Kamloops emergency preparedness manager. “Despite our efforts to keep track of how many folks might be in the community through things like point-in-time counts and regular stats we keep through those social agency partners, we can’t always anticipate exactly how many people are going to need our services.”

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CMHA Kamloops will also play a vital role in keeping people warm, adding an additional 35 beds to the count whenever the temperature falls below -5 C — or below 0 C with an Environment Canada weather warning in place.

“We are able to size up, or scale up to be able to provide more beds at Emerald and Merit Place,” said CMHA Kamloops Communications and Engagement Coordinator Brett Mineer. “In addition to that, we also have the Envision Shuttle, which our outreach team will be driving around.”

The Envision Shuttle will be helping get people to the warm beds available from any service provider in the community.

“It’s sort of an ‘all hands on deck’ situation when you get into the emergency part of winter shelter,” said Mineer. “We will be using Envision to move people around to wherever they need to be. But also, there is an outreach component with that, which is going down the riverbanks and up the alleys and things like that to try to find folks.”

The challenge with the extreme beds not being permanent is the clients need to find a warm place during the day — something sorely missing in Kamloops.

“When we come into these seasonal planning cycles, like extreme heat or extreme cold, from that emergency preparedness perspective, we would of course benefit from knowing we have that space for people to go during the day,” said Helgason.

Currently, the province has no funding stream available for the city or community partners to access to help create day spaces. However, CMHA states its facilities won’t be kicking anybody out regardless.

“We are not going to be punting people out into -15-degree weather. It’s just not a thing that will happen,” stated Mineer. “We will make it work, somehow. But ideally, there would be a day space around here that could help absorb some of that.”

Winter shelters are expected to begin operating in early November.