New Westminster charts a course for addressing homelessness, addiction, mental health

The City of New Westminster has mapped out a path to address homelessness, addiction and mental health.

At council’s Feb. 10 meeting, staff provided an update on the work to be undertaken as part of the city’s crises response pilot project. Approved by council in October 2023, the pilot project officially started last fall, after staffing positions had been filled.

“This two-year crises response pilot project started in September of 2024 to address the three complex and interrelated crises of homelessness, mental health, and substance use that are impacting all communities and at an increasing rate in the more recent years,” said deputy fire chief Brad Davie. “The crises response pilot project is based on extensive case study and research and was informed by the city's homelessness action strategy, a mental health roundtable comprised of several mental health services and the interim housing needs report.”

Davie said staff put a lot of work into developing a five-year prevention, support and transition services plan for the short term, and a 10-year supportive housing and wraparound services plan.

In a 5-2 vote, city council approved recommendations directing staff to:

• Inform resident, business and community groups regarding the best practice principles that guide the five-year prevention, support and transition services plan and the 10-year supportive housing and wraparound services plan.
   
• Work with resident, business and community groups to advocate for the actions as recommended in the 2025 crises response roadmap.

What’s the gist of the crises response pilot project?

Davie said the pilot project has a number of goals:

• Enhancing community livability for everyone by reducing homelessness and its associated impacts.
   
• Reducing harm and death from mental health and substance use.
   
• Addressing the externalities to mitigate the impacts of residents and business, such as sheltering, open burning, human waste, and discarded belongings or other debris.

Davie said the two plans are designed to work in tandem.

“It is important to note that these plans aim to bring people inside. We feel it is important to bring people inside,” he said. “By bringing people inside and addressing their needs, both plans reduce the externalities associated with these three crises on residents and businesses.”

The crises pilot project is made up of three inter-departmental teams:

• The operation support team, which has a mandate to address the externalities associated with the three crises. This includes cleaning up debris, needles or abandoned tents throughout the community.
• The crisis response team, which addresses businesses' and residents' concerns, as well as assisting people who are experiencing these three crises.
• The policy and advocacy team, which develops policy and collaborates with senior levels of government to realize additional funding and resources and supports to address the gaps and issues related to the three crises.

Mayor Patrick Johnstone is taking a moment to introduce two of the teams you'll be seeing out and about as part of the Crises Response Pilot Project. Learn about this initiative, meant to address homelessness, mental health and substance use.

https://t.co/CDO6MBpCd6 pic.twitter.com/umzzKkQO4I

— City of New Westminster (@New_Westminster) February 19, 2025

What’s in the five year prevention support and transition services plan?

John Stark, the city’s manager of social planning, said the five-year plan includes advocacy actions aimed at reducing the number of people falling into homelessness. He noted it’s more difficult and costly to pull people out of homelessness once they’re unhoused.

Other advocacy actions in the five-year plan strive to enhance livability and to reduce harm and death associated with mental health and substance use.

“This is achieved through enhanced access to mental health services and supports and to drug checking, harm reduction, detox, treatment and supportive recovery,” he said. “Just as in housing, where there is a continuum of housing, there's also a continuum when it comes to substance abuse.”

Stark stressed the importance of addressing the issues of homelessness, mental health and addiction as part of one plan.

“When we talk about homelessness, mental health and substance use, they are connected,” he said. “And if we only looked at any one crisis in the absence of the other two, we would have limited results; that's why we're looking at these comprehensively.”

So, what’s in the five-year plan?

The five-year prevention support and transition services plan includes 10 actions, four of which are part of the city’s 2025 roadmap.

• Create an inventory of prevention services to identify assets, needs, and gaps to inform referral and advocacy activities. (This includes rent banks, taxation clinics, and tenants’ supports.)
   
• Continue to coordinate meetings involving faith-based, non-profit, and provincial organizations and teams, and explore a situation-table approach.
   
• Develop additional seasonal and temporary shelter capacity.
   
• Develop an indoor overdose prevention inhalation site.
   
• Develop a Health Connect and Resources Centre to address the needs of the daytime unhoused population. (It’s estimated about 120 unhoused people on the streets during the day, when businesses are open, and residents are out and about.)
   
• Work with the Assertive Community Treatment Team, the Integrated Homelessness Action Response Team, the Peer Assisted Care Team, and the Substance Use Services and Access Team to address the needs and gaps, including those related to coverage, hours, referrals, services, staffing, etc.
   
• Work with Fraser Health and Royal Columbian Hospital on discharge planning and placement of unhoused and precariously housed patients.
   
• Work with provincial bodies to better address externalities with funded facilities, including the development of response plans.
   
• Collaborate with the New Westminster Homelessness Coalition Society on items related to Homelessness Action Week, including on advocacy and anti-stigma activities.
   
• Complete work on a citywide toilet strategy, as one of the four main user groups are those who are unhoused.

What’s in the 10-year plan?

Lynn Roxburgh, the city’s manager of housing and land use planning, said the purpose of the 10-year supportive housing and wraparound services plan is to identify longer term and sustainable actions towards the delivery of permanent shelter beds and supportive housing units. She said the number of beds being targeted in the city comes from New Westminster’s 2024 interim housing needs report.

Based on the interim housing needs report, staff have determined the city needs 58 new 24/7 shelter beds with support services between 2025 and 2030. In addition, she said the city needs 142 supportive housing units, including 20 complex care units, in the next five years.

“In the first five years, we're really focused on delivering those 58 shelter beds with the required support services, as well as 142 supportive housing units,” Roxburgh said. “And as part of that, we want to see 20 of those be complex care units. Those are units that are designed for people with more, as the name implies, complex levels of care need; so, these units are expected to support unhoused people that have severe and persistent mental health- and substance-use issues.”

With those targets in mind, Roxburgh said staff developed an action plan of items to focus on from 2025 to 2030:

• Support expedited construction of the 52-unit supportive housing development in the downtown at 602 Agnes St. (formerly 68 Sixth St.) This would include prioritizing the building inspections and site-servicing requirements to help expedite the occupancy of this building, which is scheduled for spring 2026.
   
• Advocate to BC Housing to prioritize funding to construct trauma-informed and culturally safe Indigenous housing.
   
• Advocate to BC Housing to prioritize funding for permanent 24/7 shelter with in-house support services, on a site that is located outside of the downtown and is accessible by transit.

• Advocate to BC Housing, the Ministry of Health, and Fraser Health Authority to prioritize the funding of 20 complex care units within the construction of new purpose-designed supportive housing developments.
   
• Advocate to BC Housing for permanent, purpose-designed supportive housing in Sapperton near Royal Columbian Hospital.

In the next five-year target, for the years 2030 to 2035, the city would advocate for funding for 140 additional permanent, purpose-designed supportive units, with each project having 40 to 60 units. The city would like to see those units created in the Uptown, Brow of the Hill/Moody Park, and the 22nd Street station neighbourhoods.

What’s are the city’s priorities for 2025?

Recognizing the urgency of the addressing the three crises, the city selected four actions from each of the plans to be prioritized as part of the 2025 crises response roadmap:

• Advocate to BC Housing on the need for additional seasonal and temporary emergency shelter capacity.
   
• Facilitate strategic partnerships with faith-based, non-profit and provincial organizations and teams to address needs and gaps.
   
• Advocate to the province for the need to fund a Health Connect and Resource Centre.
   
• Advocate to the Ministry of Health and the Fraser Health Authority for the incorporation of indoor inhalation services at the existing overdose prevention site.
   
• Support expedited construction of the 52-unit supportive housing development at 602 Agnes St.
   
• Advocate to BC Housing to prioritize funding to construct trauma-informed and culturally safe Indigenous housing.
   
• Advocate to BC Housing to prioritize funding for a permanent 24/7 shelter with in-house supports outside of the downtown.
   
• Advocate to BC Housing, the Ministry of Health, and the Fraser Health Authority to prioritize the funding for 20 complex care units within the construction of new supportive housing developments.

Lisa Spitale, the city’s chief administrative office, said the recommendations are based on the best-practice principles learned by staff during their research.

“All municipalities are facing the increasing challenges of homelessness, mental health and substance use, and New Westminster is no exception,” she said. “The 2025 crises response roadmap will align city department workplans, demonstrating our commitment to expediting processes to address these crises. We look forward to keeping residents, businesses and community groups informed and updated on our progress.”

Davie said a Douglas College professor will complete an independent study on the pilot project. In addition to attending a council meeting in March to explain what she will be studying and how she’ll be evaluating the pilot project, she will report back to the city in September 2025 and 2026, at the one- and two-year marks of the pilot project.

Two oppose plan

In a 5-2 vote, council supported staff’s recommendations for next steps to take regarding the five- and 10-year plans.

Mayor Patrick Johnstone and councillors Ruby Campbell, Tasha Henderson, Jaimie McEvoy, and Nadine Nakagawa supported staff’s recommendation, while councillors Daniel Fontaine and Paul Minhas were opposed.

At the Feb. 10 meeting, council voted 5-2 against Fontaine’s motion to defer consideration of the report until council’s Feb. 24 meeting.

Council also opposed an amendment he put forward directing staff to consult with residents and resident associations, individual business owners, the downtown business improvement area, the chamber of commerce and community groups, to determine their level of support for the recommendations outlined in the 2025 crisis response roadmap, and that staff report back to council with a summary of the consultation as well as confirmation regarding which business and resident groups are prepared to jointly advocate for all of the recommendations contained within the 2025 crisis response roadmap.

Fontaine cited a variety of reasons for opposing the staff recommendation, including opposition to the indoor inhalation service, concerns about adding another service to the downtown, a desire to see more of a focus on advocating for detox facilities and involuntary care, and a need for more public consultation about the city’s plan.

“For those plus multiple other reasons, I am not going to be supporting this report tonight,” he said. “There are great components within it. There are some fantastic areas, but it comes as a package.”

Minhas adamantly opposed to the city’s plan to advocate for an indoor inhalation site in the downtown. You can read more about that discussion here.

'People can't access recovery services if they are dead'

A majority of council, however, said the actions being proposed by staff are consistent with discussions the city has been having with community members, businesses, non-profits and other organizations for more than a year.

“Residents want us to do something now. Businesses want us to do something now. They don't want us to delay. This is exactly what residents are asking for,” Campbell said. “I support this plan because we need to do something. And again, doing nothing, being inactive, is not an option for me.”

In addition to engaging with the community about the pilot project, Henderson said the recommendations in the plan have been informed by other plans and strategies, including the homelessness action strategy, which had widespread engagement. She said staff have also done an “excellent job” at engaging with health-care experts and using best health-care practices that are rooted in in evidence-based policies.

Henderson said the council members are always saying the city needs to “ask the province to step up” and that is exactly what the city plans to do through the actions included in the roadmap. She said the actions to be taken will do that in a really targeted way that makes it “crystal clear” what the city and the community says is needed.

According to Henderson, 60 per cent of funding of the four pillars drug strategy (prevention; treatment and recovery; harm reduction; and enforcement) in Canada goes to enforcement, with only about eight per cent going to harm reduction. She said the harm-reduction services keep people alive so they’re able to move forward on their path to wellness.

“It's the safety net that people need,” she said. “People can't access recovery services if they are dead.”

Community members have made it clear to the city that they want to see less public consumption of drugs, Henderson said. “Giving people a safe place to consume while they are on their road to wellness is something that I think everyone will benefit from.”

As someone who once lived on the street and has delivered social services to people, McEvoy said he could not support a motion to delay implementation of the plan. He said he regularly hears about former clients at the Hospitality Project in New West who have died from overdoses.

“For some people, there is never a right way, there is never a right place. We need to respond to what's happening to people,” he said. “If you want to understand the effects, the effects are that people die. The effect is that people suffer a lot before they die. The effect is that their families, their friends, people who wanted to try to save them, were unable to do so, and had to watch that suffering and lose their loved ones. And there is a way to respond, and the way to respond is with compassion. But I also believe practicality, and that practicality is in what medical experts have to say, what people who study these issues have to say, what people or families have to say.”

Johnstone said city staff have spent considerable time getting input from community members and organizations and developing priorities for the city’s crises response pilot project. He said consultation and conversations will continue as the pilot project proceeds.

“There is a variety of opinions in this city about how we're going to address the challenge of homelessness, of drug addictions, of untreated mental health. And again, it's not only in this city, but this city is trying to find an approach that works right for this city,” he said. “And there is a lot of different opinions in the city about what we should do about it. And one thing that no one in that time has ever told me to do is wait and hold off and delay and don't do anything until we have a chance to find out whether everybody agrees on every path we're taking forward.”