Renderings of Jesse's House, which is slated to be built on the northeast corner of NRGH. (Children's Health Foundation of Vancouver Island)

By Alex Rawnsley

jesse's house

Ground broken for 16-bed ‘home away from home’ at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital

Oct 8, 2025 | 12:00 PM

NANAIMO — Expected to be complete by spring 2027, a new housing complex will help keep families together while getting critical medical care.

Representatives from the Children’s Health Foundation of Vancouver Island broke ground on Wednesday, Oct. 8, for a $10 million, 16-bed home in the northeastern corner of Nanaimo Regional General Hospital (NRGH), for families to stay close to their children admitted for treatment.

Foundation CEO Veronica Carroll told NanaimoNewsNOW the facility, dubbed Jesse’s House, will join similar homes at hospitals in Victoria (Jeneece Place) and Campbell River (Q̓ʷalayu House) as a “home away from home” for families.

“We anticipate we’re going to have lots of NICU baby families that stay in the house, much like Jeneece Place. Sometimes just families travelling to get closer if they have a bit of a high-risk pregnancy, or they need to be monitored and they need to come in town days, sometimes weeks before the birth.”

Known as Jesse’s Place, the 14,000 square foot building is being built at the Nanaimo hospital for families to stay in while their children receive care. (Alex Rawnsley/NanaimoNewsNOW)

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Spread over three storeys, the independent bedrooms will be joined by some common areas, including kitchen spaces on each floor, as well as multi-purpose rooms.

A currently grassy area between Kiwanis Lodge and the Nanaimo Public Health Unit will also be transformed into a kids’ play space.

The Foundation has entered into a 40-year lease with Island Health for space, currently part of the main parking lot off Dufferin Cres.

Carroll said since opening Jeneece Place in Victoria in 2012, over 3,000 families have stayed within walking distance of their children in hospital.

Rooms are available for $25 per night, with the average stay across both their existing facilities being around 12 nights.

Efforts from the Foundation have already seen around $7 million raised, with Carroll hoping the public will help with the final push across the finish line.

“A variety of really awesome community people have stepped up, and said they want to be a part of the project. We’ve gotten to this point just entirely on the backs of all this hard work and all this heavy lifting that many community members and leaders have already done.”

With 52 per cent of patients at the NRGH neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) coming from places other than Nanaimo, Jesse’s Home will provide them with affordable accommodations. (Alex Rawnsley/NanaimoNewsNOW)

Jesse’s House is named after Jesse Shanahan, the late daughter of Nanaimo-resident Sheri Shanahan, who stayed at Jeneece Place while Jesse was in neonatal intensive care after she was born 31 weeks early on April 16, 2013.

Since her daughter’s passing, Shanahan has been a driving force behind the creation of a similar home in Nanaimo, starting the Jesse’s Gift Foundation and raising $150,000 through community donations for this project since then.

“We weren’t expecting any extra costs at that time. So for this to be here in Nanaimo for families on Vancouver Island, or from afar…it’s just going to be a safe space for people so they can be comfortable, have somewhere to go in between feedings for their children and then know that they don’t have to worry about how much it’s going to cost for them to stay.”

Shanahan said Jesse’s House will go a long way by removing a financial burden on a family so they can focus on their loved one’s medical care.

“We’re really looking for something to hold on to where we can bring it back to the community and we can really focus on what’s important to our people here, what’s important to our neighbouring towns, what’s important to children because children are our future. It’s a good thing that’s going to be happening.”

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