BY DAVID WITTY
The recent announcement that the City of Nanaimo and B.C. Housing are partnering on the development of a ‘navigation centre’ with supportive housing is an important step toward building a ‘housing first plus’ approach to our homelessness crisis. It is also a key element of building community by caring about the well-being of our fellow citizens who have fallen on hard times. Breaking the cycle of despair and loss of dignity experienced daily by homeless people, through shelter and targeted individualized care provided by the Old Victoria Road site, will help Nanaimo move further along the road to addressing its homeless needs.
In some ways our current homeless crisis is similar to the Great Depression when Canada, provinces and communities rallied to provide collective and individual supports to help fellow citizens get through the challenging times. Then, as now, governments and communities needed to step up to close the gap between the disparate needs of unemployed, homeless, destitute citizens and the dream of a ‘normal’ quality of life for all. While today’s homeless needs and associated interventions are different from those of the 1930s, they are similar in the requirement for integrated government action and compassionate and broad community support.
Collaboration between the city, B.C. Housing and the Vancouver Island Mental Health Society to deliver the Old Victoria Road navigation centre and its programs is an example of how an integrated and collaborative approach to addressing homelessness is essential to provide all required supports so those living on the streets can transition back to a more normal life.
With such action comes the essential ingredient of a supportive and caring community. One that embraces and supports the challenging decisions faced by elected leaders; one that recognizes that supportive housing and its wraparound supports need to be shared by different parts of the city; and one that recognizes that many of those served by the Old Victoria Road facility (and others) are Nanaimo residents forced out of their rental units due to high rents.
I have had the privilege of studying how other countries have successfully addressed homelessness. The evidence points to a housing first plus model that addresses four key elements: ensuring housed citizens stay housed; providing a variety of housing types to address the varied needs of people experiencing homelessness; providing wraparound supports tailored for those in need to move them to a more ‘normal’ life; and implementing the four pillars of harm reduction, prevention, treatment and enforcement to structure the delivery of intervention.
While the proposed Old Victoria Road navigation centre is one more important step toward implementing a housing first plus model, successful housing first plus (as demonstrated in the lack of people experiencing homelessness in Switzerland and Finland) shows that more will need to be done to address a fully co-ordinated response to bring our homeless numbers down.
Successful homelessness strategies will require not only political leadership but also community support, commitment and caring.
It is time to celebrate the city’s work to address our homeless crisis through the Old Victoria (and hopefully other) interventions while urging formal adoption of a housing first plus action plan.
David Witty is senior fellow urban design, master of community planning, Vancouver Island University.
editor@nanaimobulletin.com
