Nanaimo is preparing to spend more than $300,000 this winter to keep parks and downtown clean after the planned closure of DisconTent City next week.
When the camp, home to about 300 people, is dismantled, “some of the people are going to end up in parks, they’re going to end up around the community and we have to address those issues,” says Mayor Bill McKay.
Instead of services tapering off as usual in the winter, they will be maintained and beefed up. That includes needle pickup, security for downtown public areas and parkades, downtown cleanup and park custodians working on day and night shifts to clean areas.
The $301,800 projected expenditure runs to the end of this year, with money coming from the city’s 2018 surplus.
That money is on top of the estimated $180,000 the city says it has spent to date on costs related to the five-month-old tent city.
The figure does not include legal fees.
Campers living at the tent city on city industrial land at 1 Port Dr. have been ordered by the Supreme Court of B.C. to move out on Oct. 12, but few have left so far. Many campers don’t know where to go, say advocates.
The existing 70-plus shelter beds fall short of the need.
As well as tent-city residents, there are another 300 people living on the street, said Mercedes Courtoreille, one of the camp’s organizers, who fears people will die if they don’t have a place to go. “I know that sounds extreme, but it means death for a lot of people on the street.”
She says that’s because there has been an increase in vigilante violence since the camp opened and because of the possibility of people overdosing while alone. In tent city, people come running when they hear someone call out “Narcan,” a drug that offsets the effects of an overdose.
As the city prepares for the shutdown of the tent city, Nanaimo has offered a site to B.C. Housing to build modular housing for the homeless. If it’s approved, the city would provide the land and the province would put up housing, but that could take several weeks.
McKay said the city must determine what to do in the interim, in terms of providing shelter for the campers. “If it is going to take them eight to 10 weeks to get up and running, what do we do with the people in the meantime if we are going to move them off that site?
“We have to answer those questions.”
Council and staff met in-camera this week to discuss the matter. City staff and B.C. Housing have also met.
McKay said B.C. Housing has brought in an expert who has helped with the dismantling of a large strip of tents in Surrey.
“The big difference is that they had 18 months to plan that. In Nanaimo, we had three weeks [since the court decision to close the tent city]. So you can imagine the challenges.”
Nanaimo has not revealed the location it’s proposing for modular housing. Amber McGrath, another tent-city organizer, said it needs to be close to services used by tent-city residents.
