The Pillars of my Platform

Housing Security

I support shifting Kamloops’ housing tax exemptions from large developers to homeowners who create occupied secondary suites, especially below-market rentals. This approach would add affordable housing across existing neighborhoods while helping working-class homeowners. Any exemption should depend on the suite remaining occupied and affordable.

Large developers should receive tax exemptions only when they provide a measurable public benefit, such as making at least 20% of units below market. Before offering incentives, the city should review local evidence on development costs, vacancy rates, financing, and whether an exemption would affect a project’s viability. In short: no incentives without measurable affordability.

 I also support making homeownership more attainable by exploring zoning and land-use policies that enable well-designed tiny home villages and pocket neighborhoods. By sharing land, utilities, roads, parking, and community amenities, these neighborhoods can lower purchase prices, down payments, and monthly housing costs while still giving residents detached homes and private space.

Tiny home villages can help first-time buyers move from renting to building equity while creating safe, sustainable, and connected communities. For some, they may be permanent homes; for others, a stepping stone toward greater financial stability. Expanding these options will help more working people and families achieve homeownership.

Security and Accessibility for all. Day Spaces

Day spaces are essential, life-saving services for the unhoused population of Kamloops, British Columbia, where the elements and an ever-escalating toxic drug crisis present daily challenges for survival. Without a designated space to occupy during daylight hours, the unhoused are forced into perpetual transience, being constantly exposed to the elements and the judgment of others. Expanding day spaces do much more than provide a reprieve from weather effects; they offer an established, dignified setting where access to basic human rights of clean drinking water, bathroom access, laundry facilities and healthy food are respected and made available. By giving people access to a secure, stable location during the day, they open a door to the treatment continuum, allowing healthcare professionals and outreach workers to build rapport, triage, and help meet basic housing and social service needs. Further, harm reduction services are intrinsically linked to day space access and are a proven need for the health and safety of people living in a community bearing a disproportionate burden of the provincial illicit drug toxicity crisis.

Harm Reduction 

 Harm reduction services, including but not limited to supervised consumption services, drug checking, and the provision of Naloxone, accept the truth of substance use. They place value upon the sanctity of life above stigma, shame, and criminalization. For Kamloops harm reduction service access inside day spaces means that people using don’t have to use alone or hidden away in unsupervised, potentially deadly outdoor environments. The actual reality is unarguable: for every person who uses inside access to harm reduction services, it means the loss of one life to overdose and the prevention of one case of infectious disease spread. In closing, combining day shelter access with harm reduction measures does not act as incentivization for drug use; it simply gives all members of the public a greater chance for survival, reduces the burden on emergency services, provides a greater safety net for the housed members of the community, and serves as the first step towards proper housing and healing.