A discussion on New Westminster’s housing needs sparked a tense and “uncomfortable” conversation about homelessness on Monday afternoon.
At a Dec. 9 workshop, council received and endorsed an interim housing needs report, a document that the province requires to be completed by Jan. 1, 2025. Councillors Daniel Fontaine and Paul Minhas, the two New Westminster Progressive members of council, did not support endorsement of the report.
Fontaine expressed concern that the report references the need to provide a supply of housing units that will reduce homeless – not end homelessness.
“Why are we accepting that we're just simply going to reduce it versus ending it?” he said. “I would like to know what the number (of units) is to end homelessness, not a number that's just simply to reduce homelessness. … I'm not really comfortable just saying we're approving this today with a plan to reduce homelessness, but we are not putting the target number here of actual units we need to end homelessness.”
Jackie Teed, the city’s director of planning and development, said that language in the report is from the province.
“And generally, we are cautious about speaking about ending homelessness. It's a very challenging thing to do,” she told council. “Certainly, it would be our goal; absolutely our hope to do that. But we're not under any illusions that we're going to be able to achieve that in the near term.”
Teed said part of the challenge of addressing housing needs for people who are unhoused or are at risk of going into homelessness is that it requires support from senior governments.
“That housing has to be constructed through senior government funding. So, it's outside of our ability to tackle it directly,” she said. “But what getting these kinds of numbers in place helps with, it helps for us to advocate for those projects, to come into our community.”
Fontaine said he would like to know how many housing units are required to end homelessness, so the city is able to lobby the provincial and federal governments for funding to build that housing. He also expressed concern about the time it takes to build transitional housing, noting construction has yet to begin on a project at Sixth and Agnes streets that was approved several years ago.
Support projects
Coun. Tasha Henderson said the city needs to do what it can to reduce homelessness in New West, which includes having council support projects when they come before council. She said she was glad that a majority of council members supported projects like the Aunt Leah’s housing project in the West End, a supportive housing project at 422 Sixth St., and emergency shelters in downtown New Westminster.
“If we're going to talk about ending homelessness, we need to make sure that we're supporting those kinds of developments,” she said.
Minhas opposed endorsement of the report, citing concerns that it relied on “old” data from 2021. He also expressed concern that “a lot of people are moving from other parts of the Lower Mainland” to New Westminster and questioned if there are any “programs or policies for the police or anybody else as to how to slow down where we keep taking in these people compared to the other municipalities.”
“We have a lot of people, a lot of so-called transients, that move into the neighbourhood from other parts of the Lower Mainland,” he said. “Do we have any programs through the police to slow this down or to address this issue?”
Minhas expressed concern that the report does not talk about “eliminating the problem.”
“We're asking to reduce the problem, which is very tough on people in the downtown core, whether they're residents or businesses,” he said. “And this data being so old ... I know the numbers and the data came from the province, but there's the challenge for us without having the police or the proper numbers addressing the real core issues of the problem. So just based on this alone, I'll be voting no for this one.”
A representative from the New Westminster Police Department was not at Monday’s workshop to respond to Minhas’s question.
Coun. Jaimie McEvoy said “the aspirations that have been voiced by people are good aspirations” but cautioned politicians from saying they’re going to end homelessness, without understanding what it would take to do that. He said that was the case with former City of Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robinson; when elected to city hall in 2008, he promised to end street homelessness by 2015, but the number of unhoused people continued to grow while he was in office.
Responding to Minhas’s concerns, McEvoy said staff have presented council with information in the past about the last known address of people who are unhoused in New West.
“The rate of homeless people in New West whose last permanent address was also a New West is one of the highest in the region,” he said. “New West is probably more of an exporter than an importer. It's crude language, but New West is probably more of an exporter than an importer of homelessness because we have a very high rate of rental. We have a high rate of housing insecurity.”
McEvoy said New Westminster has “a high rate” of housing that is in need of significant repair, which puts people at risk of losing their homes.
“Homelessness is a regional problem; that's how I see it,” he said. “It has local impacts, some of which can only be addressed locally. But I don't believe that New Westminster is receiving more homeless people than other communities might be, and those stats are available.”
McEvoy said eliminating homelessness requires the provision of treatment on demand, medical treatment, and access to doctors for people who are on the street.
“We need that housing, but we also need the other range of services that can get people into the housing and help people stay there,” he said. “Ending homelessness requires more than what governments are doing right now. I totally support being aspirational in New Westminster's position on that. I just think that that needs to be understood is that there's a lot to it. We need to call on governments to do the parts that are not just directly related to the housing piece.”
Fontaine said Victoria “has full command and control” on many of the issues related to homelessness.
“I guess where I'm coming from is the headline on here says projected five- and 20-year housing needs,” he said of the housing report. “And there should have been a line item in here on the need to eliminate homelessness.”
As the meeting drew to a close, Minhas reiterated his concerns about the impacts that homelessness is having on downtown residents and businesses, who are “demoralized” and feel like their concerns are not being heard by the city.
Henderson said she was feeling “really uncomfortable with the conversation” about having police managing who is coming into the city.
“Moving into a new community is not a crime, neither is being unhoused,” she said. “Yes, we are using data from 2021 – because that is the last census data available to us. When there's a new census data available, we will use that presumably.”
Henderson expressed concern that some of her council colleagues are opposed to supporting a report until it says the city plans to end homelessness, even though they voted against provincially funded projects considered by council in the past.
“Homelessness is not a crime,” she said. “Let our words be consistent with our actions. And if we care about this issue, let us vote in support of projects that come to us. … Let's not say that somehow the unhoused folks in our community need policing in order to solve homelessness. Policing is not the solution to homelessness.”
At that point in the meeting, Mayor Patrick Johnstone called for a vote on the report, as all council members had had an opportunity to speak twice on the motion.
- In a 4-2 vote, council has endorsed the City of New Westminster’s 2024 interim housing needs report. Johnstone and councillors Ruby Campbell, Henderson and McEvoy supported the motion, while Fontaine and Minhas were opposed. (Coun. Nadine Nakagawa was not at the meeting.)
- In a 6-0 vote, council supported an amendment to write a letter to the appropriate provincial ministers and the federal government listing the City of New Westminster's capital funding- gap needs for renewing, replacing, and upgrading existing capital infrastructure and amenities to maintain current service levels and to support livability for future residents.
📣 SOUND OFF: Should the City of New Westminster commit to ending homelessness or is that beyond the city’s control? Send us a letter.
