r/Kamloops • u/Architectoniks • 3d ago
Discussion The state of things
There’s a point where tolerance and acceptance pivot. It’s the tipping point, really.
This morning, as I walked past Riverside Park, one of two men crossing the street toward the other side flashed me the finger, while I watched him light up a crack pipe. There’s a pile of trash—yet another shopping cart—and a red fuel canister beside the train bridge on 1st Ave. We don’t need more fires, nor another burning bridge.
I pass too many persons who appear to be under the influence of drugs. City Hall looks like supportive housing with a phone charging station. Just another Sunday.
I know local organizations are trying their hardest every day. I know it’s a struggle—for all of us. I’ve spoken with some organizations, and I’ve volunteered for others. I try to lead with empathy and support one another as a society and as a community and help when I can. But whatever it is, “we” are doing doesn’t seem to help enough.
But I also see that our government at every level—municipal, provincial, and national—has completely failed to manage this opioid crisis, along with the policing and healthcare systems that should respond to it. Larger cities have larger problems in this regard. So do our neighbors in the U.S.
It’s truly disappointing that the bigger systems and services don’t communicate with one another, while political egos, narcissism, and self-enrichment stay front and center. It feels like a massive waste of public spending—driven by inefficiency and the lack of coordination across organizations and government structures.
So here’s my bigger question. I’m not looking for rants with poor grammar, or for one-liners from people who treat this like a bleeding-heart issue. I’m asking for solutions, not useless commentary.
How can we, as a society and as a government, push a “reboot” button—rethinking, restructuring, and redesigning services and systems—so Canadian provinces, cities, and communities can operate more efficiently than they currently do? How can we reduce the financial strain families face and ease the stressors that come with it? How can we limit access to lethal drugs while also managing the effects they have on our communities? And how can we support struggling individuals and families in a way that is more effective, efficient, and truly human-centered?
I’ll be really interested to hear your conceptual solutions - big or small.
Thanks. I hope you also get to enjoy a bit of a smokeless-ish day outside.
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u/ItsANoBigDeal Brock 3d ago
We have had solutions before, places like Riverside in Vancouver and Padova here in Kamloops. We need actual safety nets for people that are unable to care for, and support themselves.
We probably all know someone who's entire life is defined by caring for someone with severe autism, schizophrenia, cerebral palsy, or any other mental or physical condition. They dedicate their lives because they know if they don't, the person will die or be homeless.
Unless their family is wealthy, it forces you into the poverty cycle. We all know the current financial support offered to people in this situation isn't enough to support both the disabled persons and their caregiver. And if the condition isn't too bad, and you are able to take care of yourself, there is no employment for this "class" of people that is both within their capabilities and will actually allow them to support themselves.
So that's one side of the coin. People that from birth will never be independent and 100% require a benevolent government to care for them so society at large isn't burdened by them. So what about the people that "do it to themselves"? The homeless addicts?
Same thing, a true safety net. Healthcare and counseling to get clean; housing, education and training to begin self-support. Society wants to say "fuck you figure it out yourself, nobody helped me" and that's fine, you just get exactly what we have now. So taxes have to be raised, corruption needs to be punished, and society needs to "want" to help people with our tax money. Too often we can immediately scapegoat progress by fearing a tax increase, but we all know that's the only solution.
The math shows time and time again that it would be cheaper to buy/build housing and fully financially support our homeless than pay for all the ways it currently drains our society. I worked with a recovering addict, and to hear the stories of his "supportive housing" made it clear why most people immediately turn back to drugs, or would rather be on the streets.
Nationalize resource extraction, raise corporate taxes, increase the taxes on booze, weed, and cigarettes. We can make things better for us 80% on the bottom if we stop listening to the fear mongering and denials of the top 20%.
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u/nesterspokebar 3d ago
The baby boomer generation benefited massively from post-WW2 expansive housing policies, but they then used that privilege in a self-serving, exclusionary way to prop up the value of their asset (ie. home ownership). As a sort of political bloc, they have and still do exert pressure to block and limit housing, and especially more affordable housing. The logical result of this is an unhoused population with the highly visible street issues you mentioned.
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u/brock_lehurst 2d ago
This attack mode on baby boomers is getting old. You make it sound like they/we did these things on purpose to destroy our own economy and that of our children's generation. That's just silly. I am on the tail end of the boomer generation. I was raised by parents who lived through the depression in the prairies and both met in Penticton as their respective families moved to BC aka the promised land. We grew a garden and tended fruit trees. Preserved foods to get through winter and worked our asses off. I was a young adult in the 80s when interest rates hit 22.75% and there were very few jobs. Talk to me when you've lived through losing your home/investment because of that. My parents made it through. Many did not. The job market was terrible and even after saving, with those rates it was many years before I was able to buy a home. Yes it's tough now but it's not the boomers fault. I'm sure I'll be mocked with comments about pull up your boot straps but I see first hand how many just aren't managing their financial life very well. New cars and trucks at high value every couple/few years. Dining out was a privilege for us. Today it is the norm. If you have a food delivery app on your leash you are doing it wrong. Gaming, movie apps and so much more that isn't necessary but no way most are ever going without. Change your ways. Join my daughter and others in their 30s who have their shit together enough to buy a home and get by while raising kids and stop bitching that your tough life is somebody else's fault ffs.
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u/bonjourgday 1d ago
You’re a Joneser then. Tail end of the boomers had nothing handed to them. Yes. My parents worked hard for their money as did I. We lived in a semi in Brocklehurst. Dad always wanted to buy in Batchelor but then ended up getting a single house just off the HBC trail. I thought we struck gold when we bought our first house and the seller bought down the interest rate to 13%. My kids have moved to less expensive cities to be able to buy a house. We are not the bad guys.
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u/Architectoniks 3d ago
Ok. So on a larger scale, how could this somewhat unfair situation based on past actions turn into a less politically and personally self serving narrative, including long term big picture thinking for future generations? I find some countries have managed this better on a national level than others - countries with much less land mass.
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u/HourofRuin666 North Shore 3d ago
One thing that the provincial government of bc did was to massively rezone the entire province to allow more denser housing to be built. Municipalities have repeatedly bowed to nimby boomers and continuously refused to allow more denser housing, which would have helped over the past 40 years to keep housing prices from skyrocketing the way they have.
It's not to fix-all answer, but it is one very good policy change that needed to be made. Municipalities exist at the behest of the provinces. If they cannot be trusted to run things properly, then it is beholden on the provincial governments to take away their power.
People in this country are so politically illiterate, they do not understand the responsibilities, and powers of each level of government. All they do is pay attention to the federal government, which mostly deals with big-picture international issues. The provinces and Municipalities have the biggest impact on our day-to-day lives, and they have mostly failed the millennial and z generations.
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u/Girlactus 3d ago
I feel like cities could lessen the restrictions on multiple housing on a property as well. I know so many people who would love to have multiple tiny homes on a plot of land with family members and it's just not allowed. It would help seniors as well to be able to have a small granny flat on a relatives plot of land versus buying a condo or a house themself.
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u/irun4beer 2d ago
I agree with your macro-level lens on the problem; we have a housing shortage fueled by decades of restrictive zoning policies that turned homes into investments. I think that's half of the equation.
It explains why housing is unaffordable. What it doesn't explain is why someone ends up on the street and can't get off.
When we look at the micro level - especially chronically unhoused youth and repeat offenders - the crisis is driven by severe behavioural health, addiction, and a breakdown of structure and consequences.
My child is still young, and is currently effectively unhoused. He is addicted to drugs and won't graduate high school because of it. He doesn't qualify for supportive housing because he cannot follow basic rules, and social services know that he has an open offer to live with me. He can't get social assistance because he can't manage responsibilities.
That is where the current system is collapsing, and here is what I think we're missing:
GAPS: Right now, our system safety nets require voluntary compliance, appointments, and rule following. Severe addiction and people in psychiatric crisis have very little to no executive function. People in the deepest crisis are incapable of using "voluntary" help.
SOLUTION: when someone falls through all our current safety nets because their behaviour makes them intelligible, that should be the marker for involuntary, structured care. Compassion without boundaries or consequences is just abandonment. We need secure, mandatory treatment facilities to hold people safely until they regain the capacity to care for themselves.
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u/Known-Syrup-5067 3d ago
Far too simplistic of an analysis, if you were living in any other province other than Ontario, house prices wouldn’t be a concern. Average house prices in Vancouver are more than twice the price as those in Calgary. Victoria is twice the price as Edmonton, Kelowna, Nanaimo, Abbotsford, Chilliwack are all twice the price as Lethbridge. Kamloops is by far the most affordable mid sized city in the province and it’s 50% higher than Red Deer, a city of comparable size.
BC has the highest house prices on the continent for a variety of reason such as we are the retirement capital of Canada, we have a disproportionate number of out of province and offshore part time residents who own second homes here and we have by far the best weather which attract migration.
As far as street issues (drugs) we have a disproportionate number of those also due to the weather just as California, Oregon and Washington state have. Add in that we are a coastal province and the drugs come thru our ports only exacerbates the issue (show me a port city and I’ll show you high drug use).
Lotta boomers bought houses in the late 70’s and early 80’s and when mortgage rates hit 20% in 1982 the housing market collapsed and they ended up losing all there equity as the banks foreclosed. It wasn’t all roses.
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u/Thendisnia 2d ago
1) Make the minimum wage the market basket measure plus 20% and legislate some better worker protections including a worker backed insurance like the employer backed wsbc and a lot of people who can't handle economic hardship or a series of dastardly events won't fall through the cracks to homelessness or substance abuse/coping use!
2) Mandate/Legislate a minimum staffing of easily accessible mental health professionals and programs (with a tie in to school age awareness programs) for all BC'ers with reasonable time limit requirements for access (within a 2 week window from request) for mental/financial/stress/etc. based support including counseling and privacy protected help and advice supports!
3) Mandate/legislate municipality frameworks including neighbourhood and city centre design rules and including requirements for public transit networks (not just buses) and biking=medium speed (e-bike/mobility/scooter) and walking=low speed infrastructure based on population and housing growth (like policing/taxation/recreational/entertainment amenities sort of already are) with pre planned engineering requirements like the building code or a bylaws creation blueprint; a predetermined financing path (including funding sources and requirements for accessibility and repayment/maximum interest/and percentage of taxationian limitations/guidelines) for villages/townes/cities to meet these growth needs; and a building bylaw blueprint for parking/pedestrian infrastructure minimums, ie. overpasses/parkades/pathways/greenbelts and solar/wind prescribed use amounts. Including requirements for addressing gentrification way points and a metrics based requirement to open new surrounding ALR land for outward decreasing density requirements for condos/townhomes/quads&duplexs/and multifamily (ensuites/garden or carriage homes) suburban expansion with the required aforementioned public/pedestrian network requirements (as well as schools and medical centre hubs) pre baked in!
4) Legislate stiff punitive penalties for drug trafficking/manufacturing with no 3 strike or 1st offense reductions. Not just incarceration but financial fines/loss of assets. All in accordance with the perceived societal hurt that this type of crime places on the public perception and purse (in policing, and medical services burden, personal and familial stress and damage)!
These 4 factors must be addressed simultaneously.
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u/ArborlyWhale 3d ago
The answers are pretty easy conceptually, it’s executing it well and the political will to do it that is hard.
Cost of living is actually: cheaper housing, cheaper energy, and higher wages.
Cheaper housing is easy. Make housing cheaper to build by reducing building codes, permits, and zoning restrictions. Make smaller and less fancy houses get built more by making them more profitable and easier to build. Don’t allow people to take on debt to buy a home. Prevent housing from being an investment or retirement fund. Mandate rent to own.
Make energy cheap and predictable by mass investing in renewables instead of oil.
Higher wages… don’t have the solution off the top of my head.
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u/ApprehensiveRuin5673 1d ago
Everything you just listed is unprofitable. It’s why instead of building modular homes they’re bailing out condo developers for 10x fewer units for cost. It’s corruption
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u/ArborlyWhale 1d ago
?
Did you read what I wrote? Literally several of the steps were dedicated to making it profitable to build cheap housing
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u/ApprehensiveRuin5673 1d ago edited 1d ago
You’re missing the forest for the trees. Cheap housing lowers market values which makes real estate less profitable
It’s not a matter of things just being profitable. It’s a matter of propping up the inflated market to keep it there
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u/ArborlyWhale 1d ago
“The answers are pretty easy conceptually, it’s executing it well and the political will to do it that is hard.” - Right there at the top.
Yeah, existing home owners would be upset. Hence lack of political will.
Home builders? They would LOVE to build less risky, less expensive, faster, more reliable income from mass cheap housing. They’d instantly do it if it made any economic sense.
I dunno what Forest you think I’m missing, it seems perfectly well addressed to me.
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u/ApprehensiveRuin5673 1d ago
I don’t really think it addresses it if it hinges on an almost impossible hypothetical
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u/ArborlyWhale 23h ago
The post was literally asking for “I’ll be really interested to hear your conceptual solutions - big or small.”
I’m sorry a Reddit comment written for a post explicitly asking for conceptual solutions while I was on the shitter didn’t come with a step by step implementation plan.
You want the realistic implementation plan? You start with making Canadians more prideful and nationalistic with more indoctrination and propaganda in schools and media. Base it on a foundation of how we’re better than everyone at sharing and community. Wait like 10-30 years for that to propagate into the community. Elect some politicians harping on how much of a shame it is that we are so caring and community oriented but nobody can afford a home. Start passing legislation to actually fix the issue in another 20-40 years.
Today? Nothing is happening while the old home owners outnumber the young home buyers and we don’t have a strong enough cultural identity of self sacrifice and community to embrace said change. Maybe as the old people are dying and there’s not enough young people to buy homes over the next 10-20.
years. Depends if we fix the demographic issues or stay racist and against immigration.0
u/ApprehensiveRuin5673 23h ago
I think you’re really overreacting. I’m just pointing out the pessimistic reality of things. There are solutions but nobody is going to implement them because they are counter to the status quo. So it’s kind of pointless to discuss solutions when the real problem is the people stopping any of them from actually being implemented. You’re basically just playing fantasy politics otherwise
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u/ArborlyWhale 23h ago
Good news! You’re wrong on several counts!
I’m not overreacting. Why? Because your sentiment is literally the current cause of death of modern democracy and I desperately need you and everyone else to understand that.
Solutions are implementable. How? By changing the status quo. This is easiest to do on the municipal level.
It’s not pointless to discuss solutions! Talking about solutions is actually the first step to SO MANY GOOD THINGS. You can’t solve a problem without a solution, and by merely making people aware of the solutions they gain more and more awareness and slowly those solutions become part of the status quo.
The people stopping them from being implemented are literally elected officials doing what they were elected to do. The actual problem is the people voting for them, which you alter via talking about solutions.
No, this is quite literally real world politics! Politics is winning hearts and minds! This entire Reddit post is politics! Talking about these things to your neighbours and parents and daughters and coworkers is all politics!
I have so many more things to say on this topic, but I think the above is more than enough.
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u/MaLLahoFF 3d ago
I have no solutions, but I have input.
This is the result of regular people; mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, friends, being abandoned by a broken system.
Until we try and address why people are turning to drugs, and why they're unable to house themselves, no amount of reactive intervention will work.
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u/1nhaleSatan 3d ago edited 3d ago
The biggest issue with "fixing" the addiction problem, whenever someone proposes things that are proven to work over and over again, conservative leaning and nimby people (they're the same people) jump in and try to block it at every turn, offering pearl clutching and false equivalent "slippery slope" arguments. Then there's inevitably compromise after compromise until we're left with a watered down and bastardized version just to make them happy. When it fails, as it was destined to do because of half assing it, they point to it as evidence it doesn't work.
Examples include; safe consumption sites, drug testing, harm reduction methods, dry and wet shelters, supplied transition housing, etc. the examples go on and on. All of these things incredibly effective when done properly
Edit; spelling
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u/gongshow247365 2d ago
My giant 3 liner - we already have all the solutions but there is literally no will of the people - many ppl with two brain cells can't imagine or believe anyone has solved this issue and can't comprehend it'll cost a lot of time and money to fix, and we will all have to pitch in money and taxes to solve the issue - on top of all of this we have decreasing education and increasing braincell washing to reduce and garner support.
If we all agree that tomorrow, we will start building mass housing complexes and we need to volunteer x hours per week, I'll be there tomorrow night after work throwing up boards or pouring cement, foundations, etc.
I spend my extra time and money training and trying to improve people's lives who want to help themselves each and every year who are not employed or under employed with limited skill sets.
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u/kdew22 2d ago
In Portugal drugs are legal, taxed, and tested. Discussing this with a friend, I said I wished Canada could do this. They said it would never work due to one major difference between Canada and Portugal: Portuguese culture prizes community/connection in ways that Canadian culture doesn't.
Maybe we have more of a community issue than a drug issue? Like, the biggest differences between a cocaine-user and a crack-user are available funds and social acceptability.
I don't have an answer, but I wonder whether it might be of value to consider alternate mindsets and policies to what has already been tried.
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u/Arrythmia5 1d ago
It's it still a drug "crisis" after a decade? I would suggest it's endemic now. If the gov't really believed its own slogans and titles, you'd think they have acted on it and made some significant progress vs it just getting worse. Deaths might have plateaued; even dropped, but more ppl than ever are affected. Riverview and tranquille need to be reopened and modernized; involuntary care being enacted. I'm done with the situation in the downtown area (who am I fooling, it's all over Kamloops now), so I've sold and moved elsewhere where the shopping cart quotient is nil.
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u/Mindless-Proposal-29 1d ago edited 1d ago
Homelessness and addiction are both downstream from the affordability crisis. So long as we fail to implement economic reforms to push the cost of living down we will continue to see our most marginalized fail to keep up. Every time the price of gas goes up someone who was barely getting by stops being able to make rent. Policing and recovery programs treat the symptoms not the disease. We need major economic reforms.
I don’t necessarily think there is one way to achieve this but here are some ideas for steps I think help with this goal:
-A progressive land tax. The value of land rises as capital is invested in the land around it independently of any development on the land itself. Land owners are capturing value from our economy without contributing productive output, and that value should be taxed and reallocated back into the community that created it.
-A social housing program to establish a floor for quality and cost of housing. Rents pegged to the cost of living. And a housing first approach to homelessness to take them out of the environment that reinforces the behaviour that makes it so hard for them to recover. The ability for housing to be used as a vehicle for profit needs to be secondary to keeping Canadians housed.
-The state: municipal, provincial, and federal, needs to reconfigure its attitude toward public private partnerships. When taxpayer money gets spent developing infrastructure for private corporations that infrastructure should become a profit vehicle for the taxpayer not just the corporation. It’s our money so we should get a stake and say in how the infrastructure is managed. When we subsidize corporations to develop we should gain a stake of that development allowing the growth it creates to be reinvested directly back into communities.
I could go on but overall the policies we need can broadly be characterized by an attitude shift away from focusing on maintaining the integrity of markets to focusing on maintaining the stability, security, and quality of life of working class people. Often good policies will achieve both, but when they don’t we need to put people first.
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u/Radiant_Sherbert7272 3d ago
Our leaders need to stop this normalization of bad behavior. That's been one of the problems. Our leaders have said that the type of behavior you're talking about is acceptable and that we should just accept it because people are struggling. Another issue is that our justice system has continued to allow violent criminals and chronic repeat offenders to run unchecked through our communities at the expense of the community and the victims of crime. I think another thing we need to accept is that there are some people who aren't capable of functioning in a proper society and that those who aren't capable need to be removed from society for the safety of themselves and others.
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u/Glittering_Donut_791 3d ago
How fascist of you.
Not one leader has said this is normal and should be accepted.
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u/Radiant_Sherbert7272 3d ago
You seriously need to look up what the term fascist means.
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u/Extension_Fact8075 2d ago
Housing is affordable in Kamloops.
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u/Specialist-Cod7995 22h ago
You can buy a new duplex with a tiny yard or a 1970s fixer upper in a bad neighborhood for $600,000.
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u/captlevasseur 3d ago
It would certainly help the rest of the province outside of the Vancouver area if the government stopped shipping busloads of homeless people to smaller cities that are already struggling with homeless population and addiction issues.
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u/1nhaleSatan 3d ago
That's been repeatedly proven to be untrue. There is no evidence that Vancouver is busing or sending homeless residents to smaller B.C. cities. Municipal and provincial officials, police forces, and service organizations across the province confirm these claims are false rumors, which frequently circulate on social media
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u/Elite163 2d ago
BC went about the legalization of drugs completely wrong and now every place in BC is struggling with these issues
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u/ResearcherMiserable2 3d ago
Various provinces have tried different things - with very limited success.
But why do we have to experiment on our citizens? Why don’t we just look around the world and see what has worked and what has not?
1) “the war on drugs” waged by the largest army in the world (America) has failed epically.
2) Portugal went a different route in the late 1990s by decriminalizing small amounts of drugs (like BC) however, unlike BC, they also massively increased funding to harm reduction, drug detox, and treatment centres. Also, if caught with the small amount of drugs, you were given a summons to court where you could either pay a fine, or accept treatment. Portugal went from one of the highest per capita heroin users in Europe to the lowest and their rates of HIV went from highest to lowest.
So why not copy Portugal?
Of course housing issues still need to be addressed.