Nelson City Council wants the provincial government to reimburse the cost of managing and removing encampments of unhoused people this past spring and summer.
Council's rationale is that housing and public health are both provincial responsibilities, and municipalities don't have budgets or staff for either.
The request includes not only the cost of the June 26 removal of the encampment in front of City Hall, but also cleanups of the Government Road encampment in May and again on Aug. 28. The total cost of those operations was $153,627, chief financial officer Chris Jury told council at its Sept.10 meeting.
Council at first discussed sending the province an invoice, but decided to hold this decision off until next month's meeting. In the meantime, at the annual conference of the Union of BC Municipalities to be held Sept. 16-20, they will talk to other towns and cities and gauge the possibility of collective action.
Mayor Janice Morrison said there are many other municipalities that faced similar unbudgeted expenses, and that they could join forces in convincing the province to cover encampment-related costs.
Councillor Keith Page suggested that such discussions could be a first step toward joint court action against the province.
Councillor Rik Logtenberg said a simple invoice from an individual municipality would probably be ignored.
"They're going to see this and be like, 'Yep,' and put it in the pile with the 30 others they've got."
He said council needs to give some thought to what they would like to see happen, and communicate that to the province, along with an invoice.
"Encampments are something that might be here to stay," he said, "or at least for the foreseeable future, and we should be a lot more proactive about expecting them to exist and really working to create healthier, safer encampments."
Council agreed that an invoice should be accompanied by policy suggestions on how the province and municipalities should approach encampments in the future, and asked management staff to do some research into this and bring recommendations and examples of best practices to the next meeting.
Morrison said the province and the City of Nelson do not sanction encampments because they might become permanent, and instead they want to do a better job of providing permanent housing. She cited the upcoming permanent 30 housing units to be available at the former North Shore Inn, which is owned by B.C. Housing. Renovations that will allow that project have suffered delays and will not be able to house more than its current seven people until early in 2025.
However, councillors noted that BC Housing's Heart and Hearth program provides some services to encampments in several larger centres in the province, and that some municipalities have recognized the right of certain encampments to exist and in some cases are providing some services such as garbage pickup.
