By Spencer Sterritt

Capacity woes continue at Nanaimo homeless shelters

Jun 15, 2017 | 4:47 PM

NANAIMO — A harsh winter was behind the high use of Nanaimo’s homeless shelters, but the situation hasn’t improved in the spring.

More than 3,700 people used Nanaimo’s extreme weather shelter at the First Unitarian Church and more than 1,000 spent a night at the Oceanside shelter. Both reported being consistently overcapacity throughout the season, with the eight-bed Oceanside shelter constantly helping 14 people a night.

Michelle Authier, operations manager at the Island Crisis Care Society, said their Samaritan House emergency women’s shelter has been overcapacity for three years and their situation is most dire in the summer after the extreme weather shelters close.

From Jan. 1 to June 8, 188 unique clients visited Samaritan House, 61 of which were brand new to the service.

In that time, nearly 300 women were turned away, either because they had pets, were too young or there wasn’t enough space even after putting out mats on the floor. The highest month for women being turned away was March, with 63.

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“Every time staff has to do that, it’s heartbreaking for them to say ‘I’m sorry, I have no more room,’” Authier said.

The number of people coming to them for help with mental or addiction issues is also higher.

“We’ve had a definite increase in having to restrict people just due to violence. Our staff safety has to come into play. We’re always the second chance people, but at some point it’s not safe to have them in the shelter,” she said.

Over half of their clients were over 40-years-old, which Authier said is due to the challenging rental market in Nanaimo.

“Where they used to be able to live, they can’t anymore and they can’t afford to go anywhere else. Even on disability, they’re getting the base rate of $900 a month. That’s easily a one bedroom in Nanaimo.”

Robert Anderson, director of Nanaimo ministries, said the Salvation Army’s New Hope Centre had to turn away almost 780 people from their shelter between November 2016 and March 2017, since there was no room, even after adding beds on the coldest nights.

After crunching the numbers, Anderson said he was surprised at how dire the homeless situation is.

“This winter did come as a bit of a surprise, we didn’t realize there was such a number of homeless out there. We’d seen a lot of new faces but it was much greater than previous years.”

Anderson said the higher numbers of those experiencing homelessness is in part due to tent cities in Victoria being taken down, as well as referrals from as far south as Duncan and as far north as Courtenay.

Mirroring the situation at Samaritan House, Anderson said the New Hope Centre has been overcapacity for a year-and-a-half and a drop in their numbers is unlikely.

spencer@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @spencer_sterritt