Nanaimo council has yet to decide what the city’s ultimate role will be as provincial ministries, police and social agencies band together to tackle the ongoing homeless crisis.
“The homelessness issue is a serious one and is not going to be fixed easily,” Mayor Leonard Krog said in an interview.
“In terms of leadership, the issues that create homelessness are largely beyond the control of municipal governments.”
Nanaimo’s homeless population faces challenges that include coping with physical problems, mental health issues, addictions and the continuing opioid crisis. They must also deal with the varying levels of income supports and rent-subsidy rates, he said.
Krog pointed out that the province has jurisdiction in areas such as health, social assistance, mental health and addictions and housing.
The city can, for example, rezone land to be used for housing for those in need or contribute funds to leverage other monies to help tackle social issues, but it is the province that has greater jurisdiction and deeper pockets.
Krog said the city is the government that’s closest to the people of Nanaimo, but he is not sure if it will take on co-ordinating the response to homelessness.
“I can’t say we are going to yet, we haven’t settled on that. But is that the direction that I think the provincial government and agencies are either directly or inferentially pushing us? Yes.”
Homeless numbers are rising in Nanaimo. Last year’s tent city at 1 Port Place grew to at least 300 campers.
A point-in-time survey in winter 2016 found 174 homeless people in Nanaimo. A spring 2018 count found 335.
“Those are minimum numbers and my gut reaction tells me the numbers are significantly higher,” said Krog.
“There are a number of individuals living outside the city boundaries, who we would think of as citizens, who are literally camping permanently.”
Nanaimo’s homeless citizens are scattered, often in wooded areas, in camps of different sizes. Many did not move into the tent city.
The tent city was shut down in early December, seven months after it started, when the province paid for two new temporary supportive housing shelters. Those shelters are on Terminal Avenue and Labieux Place, where a total of about 170 formerly homeless people are living.
RCMP report an increase in calls for service around the shelters. But numbers provided to city council did not offer crime statistics.
In the Labieux neighbourhood, there were 898 calls for service from Nov. 20, 2017, to Jan. 24, 2018. That figure rose to 1,437 for the same period in 2018-2019, Nanaimo RCMP Supt. Cameron Miller told Nanaimo council.
In the Terminal area, calls climbed from 935 to 1,429.
But these figures are not solely crime-related — they reflect calls for service, which could cover a wide range of matters, councillors heard.
