Nanaimo RCMP say it’s being forced to redirect resources to deal with a spike in calls to two modular housing projects established when a controversial homeless camp was shut down last year.
Officer in Charge of the Nanaimo RCMP Supt. Cameron Miller presented the data to city council at a meeting on Monday.
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Two modular housing projects — Labieux Place at 2060 Labieux Rd., and Newcastle Place at 250 Terminal Ave. — were established in December in the wake of a B.C. Supreme Court injunction ordering the DisconTent City homeless camp cleared out.
Miller said call volume has since climbed far in excess of population growth and crime trends in the area.
Calls to the area of Labieux Place climbed 250 per cent, while calls to the area of Newcastle Place were up 66 per cent, he said.
“From 2017-18 to 2018-19, you can see that there is a very large increase, which I think myself, as a police chief, and the entire community as a whole has a right to be concerned about,” Miller told council.
Miller made a point of clarifying that the data referred to total calls for service, and that they were not necessarily all criminal in nature.
However, Miller said he’s had to dedicate an officer to review all files from each location, and that the force was having to redirect resources from elsewhere in the community.
“I have re-profiled resources now to focus on these two areas and am starting a crime initiative this month to go out and to work in the area, and basically this crime initiative will be equivalent to an RCMP task force working on the area,” he said.
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“One has to be aware that if I re-profile resources from A to B, I sort of rob Peter to pay Paul.”
Global News has requested comment from Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog.
Housing Minister Selina Robinson said the Nanaimo numbers weren’t a reflection on the province’s wider modular housing initiative.
“We’re not seeing that across the province at all. You need to remember that Nanaimo is a very unique situation,” Robinson said.
“You may recall we had a six-week window in which to identify housing for people that were being evacuated from a camp, several hundred people. So we moved quickly to make sure they had housing as well as support.”
Robinson said the province would continue to work with the RCMP to address residents’ concerns.
Miller said since the establishment of the new housing projects there has been some progress, with the operators now evicting tenants who refuse to abide by their rules.
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