By Spencer Sterritt

Homelessness & drug user advocates creating ties, cleaning up needles in Nanaimo

Apr 18, 2018 | 5:25 PM

NANAIMO — With their grant set to expire, a relatively new advocacy group in Nanaimo hopes to keep roots in the community and continue to find ways of helping those in need.

The Society of Living Illicit Drug Users (SOLID) started their outreach work in mid-January, handing out clean needles and advocating for the homeless. They have one dedicated staff member and roughly 20 volunteers who are either present or past drug users.

Since coming to Nanaimo, organizer Jack Phillips said they’ve handed out 3,000 clean needles, collected 2,500 used syringes from around the city and given roughly 200 Narcan kits to counteract overdoses. They were also involved in the tent city which cropped up at Nanaimo City Hall, helping organize the movement and providing on-site assistance.

Phillips said he sees their key role in the community as helping people who’ve fallen through the cracks of society and guiding them through the system.

“A lot of people from the streets have a hard time getting through paperwork, or they don’t have ID,” Phillips said. “We’re able to start conversations where they didn’t exist (and) to know what services exist to actually bring people to. They have a lot of barriers people don’t know about when they don’t live that life.”

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Phillips and Nanaimo outreach worker Kevin Donaghy are now at the table of the provincially-funded community action team, trying to curb the ongoing overdose crisis and hopefully provide more services.

But it’s unclear if SOLID will remain in Nanaimo.

Their initial three-month grant runs out at the end of April. They’ll stay active for a few weeks into May thanks to a donation, but Phillips said everything after is up in the air.

“We have another couple grants that are in play right now that we’re hoping will come in pretty quickly,” he said.

spencer@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @spencer_sterrit