Nanaimo’s DisconTent City residents — B.C.’s largest homeless encampment — don’t know what is next now that they’ve been ordered to move out.
A B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled that the approximately 300 campers must vacate 1 Port Dr. by Oct. 12.
“Nobody has suggested where these people should go,” camp spokeswoman Amber McGrath said.
A couple of people have left but the rest are staying put for now.
“I don’t know what to tell them,” she said.
Judge Ronald Skolrood ruled that safety fears justified shutting down the camp, which opened in mid-May. If campers do not leave, RCMP can arrest them.
The decision was prompted by a range of concerns listed by the City of Nanaimo, including overdose deaths, fire risks and criminal activity.
Nanaimo has 70-plus shelter beds and affordable housing is in tight supply, meaning that there are not enough places for the campers.
McGrath said the decision means displaced campers will be “spread out through the city.”
Similar to Victoria, homeless residents are permitted to camp in certain parks overnight but must pack up during the day.
Camp representatives have had meetings with a B.C. Housing liaison, she said. McGrath would like closer communication from governments. “It would be nice to get people what they need. Who knows more about what they need than the people who are living it?”
Nanaimo Mayor Bill McKay has a conference call lined up Tuesday with Municipal Affairs Minister Selena Robinson and her staff. He said the province has been talking about purchasing land in Nanaimo but he does not know what locations are being considered.
McKay said the province has raised the prospect of setting up large tents as seen in the U.S. The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, for example, said its three-year-old “Navigation Center” has served more than 1,000 people
“Navigation Centers provide these otherwise unsheltered San Franciscans room and board while case managers work to connect them to income, public benefits, health services, shelter, and housing. Navigation Centers are different from traditional shelters in that they have few barriers to entry and intensive case management,” the department’s website states.
Along with Nanaimo, B.C. has two other significant homeless communities.
A group of 34 homeless campers is in Goldstream provincial park near Langford after being evicted from Regina Park in Saanich. Anita Place tent city in Maple Ridge has about 100 residents.
A strip of tents on a Surrey street was cleared out in June when campers were relocated into three modular housing buildings and into shelters. The municipality said it would build 250 units of permanent housing to hopefully open by the end of next year.
In Nanaimo, some citizens are eyeing the empty Woodlands Secondary School and the 100-unit Howard Johnson Harbourside Hotel, which is closing at the end of October, as possible locations for a shelter.
In 2016, a tent city on the grounds of the Victoria courthouse led the province to spend $26 million on social housing as it bought three buildings with close to 200 units.
B.C.’s response to homelessness includes building more than 2,000 modular supportive housing units.
Nanaimo was in line to receive a $7-million, 44-unit modular housing facility to be built on city land, but council backed away when neighbours fought against it, citing issues such as fears for the safety of their children and discarded needles. The city asked for more time to find another site but was turned down.
The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing said in a statement: “That housing would have been built by now had council not changed their mind and withdrawn the site they had offered.”
