By Sarah Pump, PAN Executive Director
“Despite increased demand, access to basic needs services in Nanaimo has declined over the past decade,” says a report from staff at the City of Nanaimo.
On May 12th, 2025, City of Nanaimo staff presented a report to the Governance and Priorities Committee about the basic needs of unhoused people in our community, assessing existing shelter spaces and services.
Nanaimo News Bulletin wrote an excellent summary of the report and included pertinent comments from city staff. CHLY also provided strong coverage with a podcast, featuring many excerpts from the 3 hour meeting.
The general conclusion is that Nanaimo is not offering even close to adequate support for vulnerable people in the areas of shelter, meals, warming centers, and more.
Upon publication of this news article yesterday, texts and social media comments flew between countless people who work in the trenches of poverty reduction in Nanaimo, including me.
The most common sentiment expressed in these thoughts was about the complete absurdity of the obvious conclusions of the report.
Every fall, I sit down and count the number of shelter beds available in Nanaimo and then compare that number to the estimated number of unhoused people in Nanaimo. It takes me about three minutes to do, and the results are clear. I don’t need to commission city staff to do math showing that we have approximately 1000 unhoused residents and less than 200 shelter beds at the height of winter. Many of those beds are now closed due to warmer weather, including 24 beds offered by Risebridge. (I would encourage you to also read about our Mayor’s lack of concern when Risebridge lost their shelter funding.) As documented in the city report, over the last 3 months people in Nanaimo seeking a bed were turned away from shelters 550 times, and that was when extra seasonal shelters were open.
Every fall, I also create social media posts listing warming centers in Nanaimo. And every fall, my heart breaks as the seasonal opening of any funded warming centers happens well into the cold season. This past winter, the sole funded warming center didn’t open in Nanaimo until January. That means that over the cold and wet months of November and December, our city directed our most vulnerable residents to the lobbies of our recreation facilities as well as public libraries.
Of course, this report from city staff states what I and all of my frontline peers have been saying forever: these lobbies and libraries are not appropriate or helpful spaces to be used as warming spaces for vulnerable folks. In fact, I wrote a whole blog post about it last February.
Why are so many of the conclusions that were presented in this city report ones that have already been abundantly clear to those of us on the front lines?
It’s time for our city leaders to start doing things differently.
No more reports.
No more funding policing over services.
No more cavalier replies to emailed concerns from constituents.
We need to see action taken in a concrete way that leads to meaningful supports for our most vulnerable residents. Talk to the people needing support about what they want to see. Talk to us, the people who are trying to help keep our neighbours alive.
Poverty Advocacy Nanaimo 