Photo of a man in a black overcoat standing in front of a red brick building that was an old fire hall. — Collen Middleton, president of the Nanaimo Area Public Safety Association, says he’s not against warming centres but is concerned that a second downtown location planned to open at 5 Victoria Road, shown behind him in this photo on Dec. 12, 2023, will attract drug dealers and worsen social disorder in the area. Photo: Mick Sweetman / CHLY 101.7FM.

Two additional city-funded warming centres will be opening in Nanaimo this month, one at the old Nanaimo Bakery on Bowen and Merrideth road operated by the Island Crisis Care Soceity, and the other at an old fire hall at 5 Victoria Road operated by the 7-10 Club.

All together, the three warming centres will provide a place for 138 people to seek shelter from the elements this winter.

Risebridge’s warming centre has been open since Nov. 14 and capacity for 48 people, while the Victoria Road location has capacity for 30 people and is scheduled to open on Dec. 22. The Bowen Road location wil have capacity for 60 people and will be open on Jan. 2.

The Victoria Road location is located just 500 metres from a warming centre operated by Risebridge at 520 Prideaux Street.

Nanaimo Area Public Safety Assocation’s president Collen Middleton says he is not against warming centres in principle but is concerned that having two located downtown will be a magent for street disorder and drug dealers.

“If it was just about providing people who are struggling with housing and affordability and with mental health issues that find themselves unemployed and unable to secure housing, that just need a place to warm up and use the bathroom and get something to eat. Absolutely, the community wants to be right there with those people,” he said.

“We have an unmitigated catastrophe right now in terms of people being left to their own devices, unable to care for themselves, and being preyed upon by any number of drug traffickers and drug dealers that are coming into town, setting up shop and taking advantage of people that are in the depths of of despair.”

Gord Fuller, 7-10 Club board chair, says that people who are unhoused are already downtown.

“We're not going to be attracting any new people to the downtown, they're already there,” he said. “You have 150 people in the downtown area and you'll have enough space in warming centers for not even half of them there. As for the drug dealers, they're there already. We're not out to attract drug dealers downtown.”

Christy Wood, a social planner at the City of Nanaimo says that it’s hard to know if a concentration of services attracts unhoused people to a specific area of the city.

“There hasn't really been any concrete, you know, data studies to actually look at the migration of our unsheltered population as kind of moved through cities, you know, we definitely hear from our nonprofit providers that there is a need, the need is really great. And when people are moved inside, it does take them off the street, which then reduces the impact on neighborhoods.”

Wood says Nanaimo’s unhoused population is over 500 people, but there’s only 76 full-time emergency shelter beds in the city, and even with the 138 warming centre spaces hundreds of people will still be left out in the cold wet winter.

Wood says that part of the agreement between the city and service providers is to follow a good neighbour agreement where they try to keep the area around the warming centres clean and report any criminal activity to the RCMP and that the city will be increasing the presence of community safety officers in the area.

“There's only so much that a good neighbor agreement can really do,” Middleton said, adding that the Risebridge centre has one and is trying to comply with it. “The issue is, that despite that these locations tend to be attractants for any number of criminal activity that where there's drug dealers and and drug traffickers that are preying on the people that are unhoused and struggling with untreated mental health and addiction issues. “

One of the challenges for finding locations for warming centres in the city, is the reluctance of landlords to rent to organizations that provide services for the homeless.

The 7-10 club itself has been without a permanent home since it had to leave the former Community Services Building on Preideaux and Fitzwilliam that was torn down and developed into supportive housing.

Fuller says that the lack of a permanent location means the 7-10 Club has to make due with the locations and spaces it can afford to rent.

“We're kind of homeless too,” he said. “So it makes it harder for us. We only have so much funds and trying to find a place that we can afford is difficult as well.”

Wood says that the city only received applications from the 7-10 Club and Island Crisis Care Soceity, so it didn’t have a lot of choice in where the warming centres would be located, but acknowledged that the need is city-wide.

Middleton agrees that landlords being reluctant to rent to service providers limits where services are located, but he understands why.

“There's lots of other places in this city where the need may be or service may be needed. But landlords won't offer the lease because they are concerned, legitimately, that the same thing would happen there that's happening here and in lower Victoria,” he said. “There is nimbyism going on in Nanaimo, and I would suggest that it's not it's not the people of the Nanaimo Area Public Safety Association that are being NIMBYs about this. We have people that just don't want it in their backyard and there's a good reason why.”

Fuller says that if anyone has concerns about what they see happening around the 7-10 Club warming centre this weekend, they should give him a call, but that the bottom line is that the warming centre will help save lives this winter.

“Well, the takeaway would be that perhaps a life or two will be saved,” he said. “You should see less people on the street than you do currently and maybe someone won't die.”

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