A group of doctors standing before a coffin in a green lawn
Community, Housing

How will Campbell River’s next Council address homelessness? 

2026 is a municipal election year and some people hope Campbell River residents will use this opportunity to elect a city council that will help alleviate the homeless situation.

“We have an opportunity as a community to come together and actually create solutions with the support of the city, because they are the only ones that have the capacity to be able to do the longevity of some of these projects, but they need us. They need the nonprofits, they need the grassroots, they need citizens and residents to help them and to buy into those solutions in ways where we create a much more inclusive, safe, welcoming community for everybody, not just for some,” explained Sue Moen, a Kwesa Place volunteer and coordinator for the Campbell River Community Action Team. 

“Many of these counsellors and new people are going to be campaigning over the next 10 months. I think that’s really important for voters and citizens to say, ‘okay, how are you going to work with others to do this?’”

There are usually several reasons for homelessness, but the #1 cause cited by ‘point in time counts’ throughout British Columbia is invariably not enough money to pay the rent. That was the answer given by 36% of the respondents to Campbell River’s Homeless Count. This should not be surprising, given that a fifth of the city residents spend more than 30% of their income on rent.

Sue Moen:  “We know that despite some wonderful news around additional supportive and other lower cost housing opportunities opening up, for people experiencing homelessness, the numbers are still rising.” 

Discovery Community Church Crew

Cortes Currents: Are there any specific changes you would like to see or you think Campbell River needs?

Sue Moen: “Absolutely, what has been identified over and over and over again through the community safety and wellness plan, through outreach and feedback from people with living experience, from nonprofits, from health care is that we need a 24 hour service hub of some kind.” 

“Exactly how that would look would depend on a lot of partnerships, but we need to create those partnerships because we cannot build enough housing fast enough to address the crisis.” 

“In the short term, we need a place where people can connect to health, to harm reduction, to treatment if they choose to, employment skills, wherever they are on their journey, we need a hub for that.”

“Instead of sending six outreach teams hither and yawn to try to find people, maybe we could create a space where they could come and get all those services. They could get healthcare, maybe not significant healthcare, but things like foot care or wound care which is very difficult to address in the community, but it also doesn’t need a physician. A kitchen, food, somewhere to rest, somewhere to get warm, somewhere to address your hygiene issues. All of those things are absolutely necessary and everybody agrees on that.”

Cortes Currents: Some of these services were provided up until last Spring. Kwesa Place previously offered laundry, showers, clothes, coffee and snacks, seven days a week.

The former Hem’?aelas Community Kitchen

Sue Moen: “The Hem’?aelas Community Kitchen provided a hot meal seven days a week, every day of the year.” 

 “The city bought the building that their lease was in, so they were displaced.  There’s no empty building that will rent to them; there is no building for sale that the community’s been able to access.  So those services have not been replaced.” 

“What those services did was provide places for people to go to be somewhat less visible, to get warm, to create community. So those people began spending a lot more time in the downtown core, outside and being visible.” 

“That raises other people’s discomfort. The people that are outside are less physically well, less nourished, less connected to services. Their behaviour may deteriorate or just plain become more visible and that creates the perception for other people of not feeling safe.” 

“So those are the people that are then targeted by security, targeted by bylaw to move along. Don’t camp here, don’t sleep here, don’t hang out here at all, even though they’re public spaces. Just go somewhere else. There is no answer, just go somewhere else. Those folks have become displaced further from services, more into the bush. So outreach teams and health services are having more and more trouble finding them, which means they are becoming more and more disconnected from services – which means they get sicker.”

Cortes Currents:   When did security services start patrolling the streets? In the last two years I don’t think that I’ve visited Campbell River without running into a security officer. 

Sue Moen: “They significantly increased bylaw hours in 2024 and the city increased that budget by $1.4 million for RCMP and additional bylaw and security. So the presence has been significantly increased over the last couple of years.” 

“ The individual businesses and the city all contract security services, in a variety of roles. Some are loss prevention, some are simply to keep people moving, to keep people away from certain areas and to oversee different kinds of activities, whether it’s a public event or a warming center. They contract security to staff and monitor situations.” 

Cortes Currents: The RCMP have reported a substantial drop in crime, which has little to do with the topic at hand as the decrease was both in the suburbs – where homeless people ended up – as well as the downtown area.

Meal provided by Discovery Community Church

Sue Moen: “Right now there’s a bunch of different individual community members feeding people outside. As folks are able to, the city did step in with funding to lessen the impact of those closures.”

Cortes Currents: On January 8 the city approved ‘up to $24,000 from the Financial Stabilization Reserve to continue delivering a food security program through January and February 2026.’ 

Sue Moen: “They did provide a shower service out of the Campbell River Community Centre. They did provide a laundry service. One of the other existing agencies was providing, and I think they may still be providing, a takeout meal to replace the dinners. The challenge for a lot of people, is as they are displaced further and further from downtown or just moved along or sleep deprived, they are more challenged to access those replacements, such as they are. So to get the dinner meal, they have had to be able to access that agency in a very short time window. If they are displaced over and over and over at night, then they are finding places to sleep during the day so they’re not able to access those services.”

“Everything’s turned around for them. Where before they had a routine and safe places to go where they were welcomed, they could then use those as touchstones to access the services that they needed.” 

“ It is really a statement of who is valued. Some people’s discomfort is much more weighted than other people’s life-threatening circumstances. Those people are being told and our community is being told that they are less valuable than somebody who wants to go to the library but doesn’t want to see somebody using substances, or in bad shape, or having a mental health issue. That’s what is going on.”

Links of Interest:

All images except podcast courtesy Sue Moen; top image credit Doctors for Safer Drug Policy International Overdose Awareness Day Die In

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