Nanaimo - 702 Nicol Street – Supportive Housing
Project Overview
BC Housing has created new purpose-built supportive housing at 702 Nicol Street, Nanaimo.
The new Samaritan Place building includes 52 units of supportive housing. These will provide long-term housing for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. There are also 14 bridge to housing beds for women.
Island Crisis Care Society operate this building, providing 24/7 staff.
The project is completed, and residents moved in in March 2022.
What is supportive housing?
Supportive housing provides secure homes for people who need supports. These supports allow residents to shift to a more stable and healthy life.
All residents will:
- Currently live in Nanaimo
- Apply to live in the building
- Pay rent
- Sign a program agreement (like a tenancy agreement)
What is bridge to housing?
Bridge to housing provides beds, showers, and meals for women in need. It also offers many of the same 24/7 support services as permanent supportive housing.
Community Amenity Space
BC Housing engaged with community to receive input into the design of the building. One outcome of this engagement was the inclusion of a community amenity space on the ground floor.
This room has its own entrance off Nicol Street and is available to rent for community events through Island Crisis Care Society.
Room rental costs will be set every six months by ICCS and will reflect a fair calculation of energy, admin and cleaning costs associated with the room use. Please refer to the Terms of Reference for more information.
Bookings can be made by contacting the front desk at ICCS head office:
- Phone: 250-585-5505
- Email: info@iccare.ca
Community Advisory Committee
To help build a good relationship with the neighbourhood, a Community Advisory Committee was set up in September 2022. This committee is made up of members of your community and the project partners. The group meets monthly to share information, ask questions and work together to build a strong community.
Who to call sheet
To support the community in this transition, we have added a “who to call” sheet for the South End provided by the City of Nanaimo. This sheet provides a quick list of important contact details and in which situations they could be used.
Past Neighbourhood Engagement
BC Housing and its partners hosted an online virtual neighbourhood meeting on July 28, 2020 to share information about the plan for 702 Nicol Street, answer questions and collect community feedback with the public, a copy of the presentation is also available.
Subsequent neighbourhood dialogues were hosted on December 10 and 15, 2020 to discuss the project in more detail and collect feedback into the exterior, landscape, and community amenity space design.
A survey was live on this page to collect input into the proposed design options from December 4 - 18, 2020.
Your feedback and comments are important to us
Please send your questions and feedback to communityrelations@bchousing.org.
Craning
Modular housing is housing that is partially built in a plant, shipped to a development site, and placed on a foundation. It is often the most time efficient method of construction. Modular housing generally results in less waste, making it a more sustainable method of construction.
Part of the modular building process involves “craning”, where parts of the modular building are moved into place with a crane. Craning for this site took place in summer 2021. To share the progress with neighbours, we created this timelapse video.