Homelessness continues to grow in Nanaimo, but the city is coming up short with existing services, such as meal programs, emergency shelters, supportive housing, hygiene facilities, daytime services and health care to help people who are unhoused, according to a new report.
The assessment was presented in a city staff report at a governance and priorities committee meeting May 12. Creation of the report was directed by city council last fall to as an update on basic needs of Nanaimo’s population of unhoused people after last year's point-in-time count tallied at 621 experiencing homelessness, a figure that climbed from 515 people in the previous year's count.
“With that we know that 70 per cent of people living on the streets have no access to overnight or daytime shelters,” said Dave LaBerge, the city's director of public safety. “Actually the best estimates about actual homeless numbers are 1,000 in Nanaimo.”
The report outlines meal programs, emergency shelters, supportive housing, hygiene facilities, daytime services and health care provided by the city and its community partners including Snuneymuxw First Nation, B.C. Housing, Island Health, Vancouver Island Regional Library and Nanaimo Systems Planning Organization.
“This growing need is really compounded by the loss of key services,” said Christy Wood, city manager of social planning. “In the last 10 years we’ve lost some very important basic needs services within our community. We’ve lost a drop-in centre. We’ve lost some meal provision. We’ve lost other shower programs in the past … and basic needs, as you know, are foundational to support of stability and wellness and they’re often the first point of contact for long-term services.”
Six organizations currently provide emergency meal services. Most meals are distributed outdoors through outreach programs or from fixed program locations. Funding is limited and often comes from private donations, volunteers or community grants.
The 7-10 Club closure in 2021 followed by the closure of the Salvation Army's dining hall at the New Hope Centre created a gap in the provision of indoor meal services, Wood said. The city has provided “bridge funding” until other funding sources could be found, but so far, no permanent funding source exists.
"Nevertheless, our agencies are very creative to offer that limited meal service through outreach supported by private donations,” she said.
The Salvation Army’s New Hope Centre stopped offering drop-in showering to the public during the COVID-19 pandemic and now limits it to shelter guests, so there remains a single shower program at Caledonia Park, a service that is now operated by Nanaimo Family Life Association. On average, 30 people used the facility daily totalling 7,500 showers in 2024 and shower usage there has quadrupled from 2018 to 2024, the report noted.
The leisure economic access pass program allows people to access Nanaimo recreation facilities with showers. Nanaimo Family Life Association collaborates with city staff to adjudicate LEAP applications for clients accessing emergency shelter and other support programs. The overdose prevention site downtown also opens its washrooms to people who are using the site. The city’s public washrooms and drinking water fountains are, otherwise, often the only sanitation resources for unsheltered people.
For daytime warming centre services, the city partners with various agencies during the winter months.
“We know that these warming centre services have acted as essential lifelines, offering food, clothing and safe spaces during the coldest months and we know that after the warming centres close … often unsheltered individuals have nowhere to go and often relocate to doorways or businesses, playgrounds or parks because of the lack of daytime services,” Wood said.
The report noted that RCMP bike patrol and community safety officers had difficulties relocating people experiencing homelessness from public areas because of the lack of purpose-built drop-in or warming spaces, so recreation centre lobbies and public libraries that are not designed to handle people who are “heavily substance-affected” or have “acute or complex needs” have been used increasingly to provide temporary relief from extreme weather.
The city has partnered with the federally funded Reaching Home program to fund a drop-in hub operated by Island Crisis Care Society at 55 Victoria Rd., which offers access to food, hygiene supplies and clothing, plus other social and health connections. The city report tallied 6,200 visits in the centre's first three months of operations.
B.C. Housing uses the hub as an access point for the province’s HEART and HEARTH programs that link unsheltered people to supports in temporary housing and B.C Housing has also funded 20 overnight shelter beds operated by Nanaimo Family Life Association until May 31.
Nanaimo currently has about 10 per cent of the shelter capacity that it needs, based on the point-in-time count, compared with Kelowna which has 89 per cent of the shelter capacity it needs, and Kamloops with 67 per cent. B.C. Housing provides much of the emergency shelter funding, while some service providers that fund their own shelter beds are looking to B.C. Housing for help to expand the service.
Supportive housing unit numbers are set to double in Nanaimo. So far, Wood said, there are 329 permanent and temporary supportive housing units currently providing housing with about 342 more proposed.
A collaboration between the city’s public safety and IT and GIS departments is working on the social services management mapping project to develop a creative interactive online map to help staff analyze the “relationship between social services and neighbourhood vitality, identify under-served areas or those at risk of social conflict and disorder, and support placement of new essential services including basic needs programs while balancing neighbourhood considerations,” the report noted.
