Make a Difference Today
Join Us in Tackling Unaffordability
Discover how you can contribute to creating a community where everyone has a safe place to call home.
Understanding the Crisis
An average single person’s income in Nanaimo is $48,800
This allows a maximum sustainable affordable rent of $1,222 per month (30%).
The average cost of a one-bedroom apartment is about $1,716 per month.
This drives the costs up to 42.1% of that person’s monthly gross income.
Homelessness is a growing issue in our community, affecting countless individuals and families. Our mission is to advocate and assist in getting affordable housing for people to keep them from becoming homeless. Explore the options below and see how you can help.
Take Action Now
How You Can Help
Contribute to the Cause
While the concern and support demonstrated by volunteer work and advocacy are essential, material assistance is also a necessity. Donate today.
Needed items and services might include:
Clothing
The lack of clean, well-fitting clothes and shoes causes great hardship beyond exposure to the elements—it hurts one’s self-image and one’s chance to get ahead. People experiencing homelessness must travel light, with few opportunities to safely store or adequately clean what they can’t carry. On job interviews, a poorly dressed person has little chance for success. Give your clean clothes to those who could use them. Before you give your own clothes or start a clothing drive, talk to us and find out what items they really need. Most have limited storage space, and can’t use winter clothes in summer or vice versa. Some serve only a certain group of people. Please clean the clothes before you donate them.
In-Kind Services and Materials
Service providers may be able to use copying, printing, food, transportation, marketing assistance, computer equipment and assistance, electrical work, building materials, plumbing, etc. We can connect you with someone if you ask.
Household Goods or Other Items
Service providers may need items such as kitchen utensils, furniture, books, toys, games, stuffed animals, dolls, diapers, etc. Again, we can point you in the direction where your items will do the most good.
Books
People experiencing homelessness may have limited access to the library and find that there is little for them to do when spending a night at a shelter or in the bush. Find out if our local shelter would appreciate donations of books. Then, consider organizing a book drive to create a small library at the shelter if there is not already one there.
Homeless Survival Kits
Create and distribute kits that include items such as cups, pots, pans, soap, shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and cosmetics. (Try coordinating this through a group that gives out meals, for example.) During cold weather, organize drives for blankets, coats, hats, scarves, mittens, socks, and the like.
Phone Calls
Help people experiencing homelessness contact loved ones by offering the opportunity to make free long distance calls on holidays. Donate to or organize a cell phone drive for the homeless.
Job Opportunities
Encourage your company, school, or place of worship to hire people experiencing homelessness for temporary or seasonal tasks (if they are not already working). Most unemployed homeless adults desperately want to work, but need someone to give them a chance.
Raise Funds for an Existing Program
Ask your co-workers or friends to abstain from one meal and donate the proceeds to a shelter or meal provider. Sponsor a benefit concert or coffee house event featuring local musicians and poets (Don’t forget to include homeless and formerly homeless performers!). Organize a walk-a-thon or a yard sale and donate the proceeds. The options are as many as you can think of.
Smile
Whether or not you choose to give change, please don’t look away from homeless people as if they do not exist. Making eye contact, saying a few words, or smiling can reaffirm the humanity of a person at a time when homelessness seems to have stripped it away. For more insight into panhandling and homelessness, read “Panhandling: A Little Understanding.”
Advocate for Change
Advocacy is critical to creating the systemic changes needed to end homelessness. Advocacy means working with people experiencing homelessness to bring about positive changes in policies and programs on the local, provincial and federal levels. It means working with various sectors of the community (e.g. city/regional district officials, Members of the Legislative Assembly or Members of Parliament, direct service providers, and the business community) to develop workable strategies for responding to homelessness. It also means changing your language and behaviors in small ways that may contribute to larger changes in the way people experiencing homelessness are seen and treated in our society.
Here are some ways you might help:
Get Connected to a Service Provider
Volunteer at local, regional, provincial or national housing provider or homeless advocacy organization, or make a financial contribution to support their work.
Respond to our Government Alerts
Then write letters, e-mail, call or visit public officials at the city, regional district, province and federal levels asking what they are doing about homelessness and/or mentioning relevant legislation and/or statistics. When legislators receive more than a few visits or letters about any subject, they sit up and take notice. Personal visits are the most powerful; letters, e-mails, and phone calls are next. Contact information for public officials is available on their agency’s respective websites on the Internet.
To call Mayor Leonard Krog’s office, use (250) 755-4400.
For City Councilors, go to www.nanaimo.ca/your-government/city-council/contact-mayor-and-council
To contact the Chair of the Regional District, Stuart McLean use (250) 741-4589 or stuart.mclean@rdn.bc.ca.
To contact MLA Sheila Malcolmson, use (236) 362-0012 or sheila.malcolmson.mla@leg.bc.ca.
To contact MLA George Anderson, use (250) 716-5221 or george.anderson.MLA@leg.bc.ca.
To contact MP Tamara Kronis, use (250) 434-7110 or tamara.kronis@parl.gc.ca.
To contact MP Gordon Johns, use (250) 947-2140 or gord.johns@parl.gc.ca.
To contact Prime Minister Mark Carney, use mark.carney@parl.gc.ca.
Follow Local Politics
Attend neighborhood and public meetings and speak up in favor of low-income housing, group homes, shelters, and homelessness prevention programs.
Involve the Media
Call or write the media to inform them of your concern for people experiencing homelessness in your area. Write letters to the editor when important issues related to homelessness arise in our community.
Reach Out
Reaching out by volunteering your time to work directly with people experiencing homelessness is one best way to learn about homelessness and help to meet immediate needs at the same time. There is a lot of “behind the scenes” work (filing, sorting clothes, cutting vegetables, etc.) to be done at shelters and other direct service agencies. Think about what you do best and the kind of setting in which you work most effectively—with individuals or groups, with men, women, or children, and so on. Then, call a few places, ask what help they need, and arrange for a visit.
Remember that service providers need help at all times of year—not just holidays—and will appreciate regular volunteers who can be counted on to show up.
Here are some ways you might help:
Work at a Shelter or Support Agency
Volunteer to help on an evening or overnight shift. Help with clerical work such as answering phones, typing, filing or sorting mail. Serve food, wash dishes or sort and distribute clothes and personal care items.
Offer Your Professional Skills
Direct service providers may be able to use many services and skills, including secretarial, catering, plumbing, accounting, management, carpentry, public relations, fundraising, legal, medical, dentistry, writing, child care, counseling, tutoring, or mentoring.
Organize an event
Plan an evening program for homeless people such as a board game or chess night, an open mic poetry reading, a guest storytelling or musical performance or a holiday party. Outdoor events (weather permitting) allow people to keep their personal belongings close by and still participate in a social event.
Involve Others
Encourage your classmates, co-workers, church members, or service club to join or support your efforts.
Educate Others
Learn about Precarious Housing and Homelessness and Teach Others
Here is an interesting Fact Sheet on many aspects of homelessness including causes, numbers, and special issues. Read the sheet to familiarize yourself with the latest information, and then share what you learn within your community—your place of worship, school, colleagues, friends, neighbors, media, and elected officials. Be sure to follow NCAH on Facebook and Twitter and repost to spread awareness!
Join Us in Making a Difference
Your support can transform lives. Sign up for our upcoming events, volunteer your time, or do something else to help us advocate for affordable housing in our community. Every action counts. Together, we can create lasting change in peoples' lives.
