Yesterday, PAN was copied on an email written by a doctor on the front lines of our homelessness crisis in Nanaimo. She addressed any and all people in positions of authority in Nanaimo, pleading for warming centre support for our unhoused neighbours. Instead of sharing an excerpt, we decided to share her complete text. It is powerful, and must be heard. Our sincere thanks to Dr. Jessica Wilder for her permission to publicly share this, and also for her invaluable work.
“The suffering of our unhoused neighbors is ALL of our problem, and we MUST come together to find solutions.
Currently, we have zero funded warming spaces in our town. RiseBridge responded to this dire need last week by opening its doors for three hours a day, seven days a week. It is being funded by the generous provision of community citizen’s monetary donations through a GoFundMe campaign. They are hoping to be open until Jan 7th at least, dependent on donations. As of Jan 2nd, ICCS/NFLA will open an access center that can support 20-30 people inside at a time, which is at best 3.75% of our unhoused population.
It has not stopped raining here in weeks; our patients are drenched, services are running out of dry clothes and socks to give, and we are seeing health deteriorate which has lead to increased ED visits and hospital admissions. On Primary Care Outreach, we are finding our patients blue in the lips and fingers, huddled under saturated tarps in parks and alleys. We are seeing trench foot, wound infection and deterioration, pneumonias, and hypothermia. At AVI’s closing time last week, we had a number of unhoused people huddled by our front door who were besides themselves, frantic about how cold and wet they were, begging us to do something. Our staff had nowhere to send them, so they invited them to sit in their cars with the heaters on to warm up, until they had to send them back out into the cold and rain. A couple of weeks ago, an office assistant of Dover Bay High School phoned me to say there were three homeless people huddled in an alley of their school. They were soaked, shivering, and she thought they would need medical attention if there was nowhere for them to go. All of our community teams were occupied helping others in similarly desperate situations, so I left my work to pick them up and take them to a restaurant. There, they warmed up while we shared a meal together, and I gave them dry clothes out of my own closet.
The city tells our outreach teams to take people to the library or rec center, but security guards there move our patients along and they are ultimately not welcome there.
In 2022, you stated that “the cold weather constitutes a hazard to human health”. The above are just a few small examples of the hazards to human health that we are seeing every single day. I know that there is special funding only allocated for less than -4 degrees, but what about the cumulative hazards to health that result from the relentless cold and rain that has plagued our unhoused community members for weeks on end, with no reprieve?
Every level of government has suggested that this problem is “someone else’s” to navigate, and meanwhile our neighbours are freezing outside. This problem is all of ours. We are desperate. Please, support us with finding a solution.”
With gratitude,
Dr. Jessica Wilder, MD, CCFP
Co-Founder, Doctors for Safer Drug Policy
Harm Reduction and Education Physician Lead, VIHA
Addictions Medicine Physician Lead, NRGH
Addictions and HIV Care, AVI Health Center Nanaimo
Email: doctorsforsaferdrugpolicy@gmail.com
🟡To read more about this situation, the Discourse has a news story.
🟡Risebridge’s fundraising site to keep their warming centre open.
Poverty Advocacy Nanaimo 