A councillor in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond who obtained data on the numbers of non-government-sponsored refugees arriving at the city’s one shelter says the federal government needs to provide financial support the way it has in Quebec and Ontario.
Councillor Carol Day said the numbers indicate that refugees are now taking up a third of the limited number of shelter beds and she urged her colleagues to push for federal support.
Council voted unanimously to ask for support at a meeting last week.
And, she said, other communities should be asking for it too. “We think it’s everywhere. And it’s just not right that the federal government is allowing people in and not stepping up with supports.”
A statement provided to The Globe and Mail from B.C.’s Housing Ministry said that “the province is very actively assessing the situation, hearing from our partners about what they are seeing on the ground. Next steps will be determined based on those conversations.”
BC Housing, the agency that oversees social housing and shelters, said it does not currently receive any federal money to help with shelter costs for refugees and asylum seekers.
The numbers that Ms. Day was able to get from the Salvation Army-operated shelter in Richmond showed that as much as 59 per cent of the available space, which was up to 72 beds in some months, was being occupied by refugee claimants, with an average of about 30 per cent over the year.
Ms. Day said she pursued the issue with the help of two local federal MPs, Parm Bains and Wilson Miao, because it was upsetting her that some long-time Richmond residents, including seniors, were being turned away from the shelter. She couldn’t understand why until a shelter worker told her that they were having to turn away locals because of the numbers of refugee claimants seeking help.
In general, BC Housing and shelter operators in the province, such as the Salvation Army’s central office and Union Gospel Mission, say they do not collect information on people’s citizenship or refugee status, calling it inappropriate and unneeded. As a result, none of them have any publicly available numbers to show whether there are more asylum claimants coming to their shelters.
“The province, through BC Housing, funds shelter spaces across B.C. To protect privacy and so that people feel comfortable coming forward, shelter operators do not track a person’s immigration status or whether a person is a refugee claimant when admitting them into the shelters,” said a statement from the agency. “Hence, we cannot provide an accurate reference regarding the immigration status of people accessing emergency shelters.”
But people who provide other services to refugees and asylum claimants say there is no doubt that there has been an enormous increase in the past two years that is putting a strain on all systems, starting with shelters.
“At the end of the day, I think a lot of folks are being referred to shelters. There’s a big concern that that’s where they are ending up,” said Loren Balisky, the co-founder of an organization called Kinbrace Community Society, which runs a small house with about 20 beds of transitional housing for refugees.
Mr. Balisky said the organization was already having trouble dealing with more people than it could help when B.C. was seeing an average of 161 claimants a month in 2021. In 2022, the numbers rose to 326 a month, then to 700 a month in 2023.
Even two years ago, it had been difficult to find places for people to move on to from the transition house because the cost of housing in the Lower Mainland is so high. Now, the organization is feeling even more pressure because staff know there are people waiting in shelters just to get into transitional housing like theirs.
Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced at the end of January that cities and provinces would get an additional $362-million to help with housing the rising number of asylum applicants. The City of Toronto was promised $142-million of that.
But neither the province nor the City of Richmond has had any information about what B.C. or individual cities in the province might get.
The federal MPs who have been helping Ms. Day and Mr. Miller’s office did not respond to requests from The Globe to provide details on what kind of money B.C. or any individual cities might get.
Frances Bula