BC Housing has proposed to establish a 25-bed, year-round interim shelter at 3892 Third Avenue in Smithers, under the Province’s Heart and Hearth program. Smithers Mayor Gladys Atrill says the municipality is required, as a local government, to house people.
“We are obligated to have a place where people can stay if they don’t have housing. So we have the encampment, and we’re trying to move down whatever lane we can find to do better than this.”
What is proposed is a temporary safe space, while BC Housing continues to develop a permanent supportive housing unit and shelter at 3879 Alfred Avenue. BC Housing is building 60 new homes there.
The 3-storey residential apartment building will include 40 studio supportive housing units, and 20 permanent shelter spaces with support services, along with separate indoor program spaces and outdoor common areas.
Atrill says the locations are all relative.
“The proposed shelter is one block off Main Street. It’s all downtown. So people are concerned with the impacts on their business, people downtown with, you know, unruly behavior, inappropriate behavior, people putting impact on their customers, people coming into the stores behaving inappropriate, the same thing we’ve been living through.
So I think that’s a concern for business owners. So, yeah, I mean, I actually don’t expect the concerns to be much different, if the shelter proposal moves back to what we call the ‘fabrications building’. You know, the hot spot changes from where we are here, near Town Hall, to where it was over winter. At the same time, a shelter offers better supports to individuals. And we saw that over the winter - that supports were delivered to people who are in the shelter, and their circumstances improved, which meant that the issues around community safety subsided somewhat. So I think that’s the hope, again, that if we can get a shelter built, that we’ll see a subsidence of some of those behaviors that are hard on people. At the same time, it’s clear that where there is a shelter, there will be, you know, a different kind of hot spot for activity."
Residents of Smithers are encouraged to attend the drop-in community open house tonight, May 13th, at Muheim Elementary from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. to learn more about the proposal. Questions or comments can also be sent by email to communityrelations@bchousing.org. Community members may submit feedback related to the proposed interim shelter to this inbox for consideration by May 15, 2026.