By Adam Donnelly

New bridge housing facility opens on Royal Avenue

Nov 23, 2018 | 3:51 PM

KAMLOOPS — Friday marked another important day for affordable housing in our city, as the Canadian Mental Health Association officially opened The Branch at 185 Royal Ave.

“This has been a vision of a project that I don’t believe has been done in B.C., and in the little bit of research that I’ve done, I don’t think there’s anything else that exists like this,” CMHA Kamloops Executive Director Christa Mullaly told those gathered for the open house event.

According to Mullaly, the Branch is a unique space not only in our city but throughout British Columbia. The bridge housing facility will shelter 40 people and will offer a full range of services for those who live there.

“Our staffing model exists of supportive housing workers for our CMHA Staff,” Mullaly explained. “The rest of the support services are all through community partnerships and connections that we have in our community.”

Those connections also include local eateries, who have stepped up to provide meals for the residents of The Branch.

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“We have engaged two local restaurants — and by local, I mean a couple of our next door neighbours — to provide the food service for our tenants here,” Mullaly said. “There’s a whole bunch of unique aspects to this model that really make [the Branch] an outstanding example of how when a community comes together, we can figure out what we need here in Kamloops.”

The facility was first announced in early October and was originally billed as a place for residents to stay while transitioning into more permanent housing. With two new low-income housing projects set to open up in the spring — one on West Victoria Street and the other on Tranquille Road — the Branch will allow folks living on the street a warm, safe place to live for the winter months until those two spaces open.

by Adam Donnelly

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New bridge housing facility opens on Royal Avenue

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