City of Nanaimo funds daytime warming centre

The City of Nanaimo is funding Risebridge with up to $230,000 to operate a daytime warming centre this winter and is calling for other service providers to help open more across the city. Photo: Mick Sweetman / CHLY 101.7FM

Temporary overnight shelter also opens at St. Peter’s Church

The City of Nanaimo council has voted to allocate up to $230,000 to Risebridge to operate a daytime warming centre this winter that will run seven days a week between November 14 and March 31, 2024.

The money is coming from approximately $400,000 that is available from the Asset Retirement Obligation Project Surplus Fund.

Council also directed staff to call for expressions of interest from other organizations willing to run additional warming centres and for additional funds to be identified.

Councillor Paul Manly supported the motion to fund Risebridge but that more sites are needed

“The capacity for Risebridge is just not going to be there, in terms of the number of people that are going to be seeking warmth on cold, wet miserable days,” he said. “And the impact on this one particular neighborhood is going to be strenuous. I think we need to share the load a little bit in the community.”

Manly says that the need exists from “north to south in Nanaimo” and that he hopes people who have empty buildings and faith organizations “step up.”

In addition to the city-funded warming centre, BC Housing is funding a 35-bed temporary shelter at St. Peter’s Church operated by the Nanaimo Family Life Association that opened on Wednesday night and will run until the spring.

Councillor Sheryl Armstrong says that smaller organizations should also consider helping out.

“I think even if you say that you can take in 10 people or 20 people, I think that's very important for us to hear about,” she said. “Because if we had 10 organizations willing to take in 20, that gives us 200.”

Councillor Hilary Eastmure says that in addition to the warming centres, she would like to see city bylaw and community safety officers (CSO) change their approach in cold weather.

“I know that our CSOs have a responsibility for ensuring the downtown is a safe and welcoming place for everyone,” she said. “But I know that there have been instances lately when we've had really, really terrible weather at night and they've been out there, by our own direction, forcing people to leave vacant doorways in the middle of the night. And they have nowhere else to go.”

Dave Laberge, manager of bylaw services for the city, took umbrage at the remark.

“The majority of the time of the CSOs is actually taken wayfinding, supporting and [doing] wellness checks,” he told council. “They gather clothing and things to keep people safe and warm in extreme weather. So to suggest that they're being disrupted or moved, or that these things are being taken away during inclement weather, it's actually the antithesis of what these officers are doing.”

Laberge says that bylaw officers try to balance the rights of unhoused people sheltering in city parks with not allowing encampments to become entrenched and present a fire hazard.

Mayor Leonard Krog says the city’s property tax base isn’t sufficient to fund social services at the level that is needed

“The fact that we need to deliver these kinds of public services, shelter spaces and warming centers in this community for hundreds of our fellow citizens, and across this province thousands of fellow citizens, is to me the ultimate condemnation of where we have allowed ourselves — and I take my full role in it as well — collectively to get to in the 21st century is appalling,” he said.

Councillor Tyler Brown also moved that the council sent a letter to Premier David Eby. “outlining the continued and severe health needs of unsheltered populations in Nanaimo and the community wide need for provincial funding that matches the scale of the crisis.”

Council voted unanimously to support that motion.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.