Business association calls for recovery housing after Kamloops overdose death

A Sunday morning overdose death in Kamloops has spurred a local business association’s call for governments to shift their focus on the toxic drug crisis.

“We don’t need more reports,” North Shore business association executive director Jeremy Heighton said in a media release.

The overdose victim hasn’t been identified, but the death took place on Oct. 26 less than a block from the business association office. In a news release, the association called it a “needless and heartbreaking reminder” of the need for street-level care.

“We need coordinated action that actually links the person in crisis to the right service, in real time, through a shared system that keeps people from falling through the cracks,” Heighton said in the release.

He said the province needs a BC-wide system to coordinate social workers, outreach teams and health care providers.

iNFOnews.ca has reached out to the BC Coroners Service and Kamloops RCMP for more information about the death.

Their death brings the tally in Kamloops to 39 in 2025, according to BC Coroners Service statistics. Kamloops, along with many other BC communities, are on track for the lowest annual death toll since 2019.

Roughly a fifth of those deaths have been outside.

Heighton said each one has left a family “forever changed.”

“Each of those lives represents a missed opportunity to connect someone to care. These tragedies will continue inless we move beyond fragmented responses and build a coordinated, real-time system that meets people where they are,” he said in the release.

Pitching a “community interface management” system, he said it’s designed to bring “compassion, consistency and accountability to the front lines.”

The business association began pitching the model in 2018, which is designed to not only integrate social and health care systems but also shifts low-barrier social housing to “recovery-focused solutions.” Only 15 per cent of supportive housing in Kamloops is currently focused on recovery, according to the release.

It also calls for an expanded complex care system and 24/7 street outreach systems.

“These deaths are not inevitable,” Heighton said. “They are the outcome of decisions — or indecision — that have allowed systems to operate in silos while lives are lost in the spaces between them.”