Unhoused numbers in Cowichan surging; more expected during FIFA World Cup games in Vancouver

Published 11:05 am Tuesday, March 17, 2026

The unhoused population in the Cowichan region is surging, and it’s expected to continue to increase through the summer.

John Horn, North Cowichan’s director of social planning and protective services, told council at its meeting on March 4 that a recent count by local officials found the number of unhoused people to be up to 428, with 290 of them without any kind of shelter.

He said he expects the number to increase as the warmer months approach.

“It happens every summer in every community,” Horn said.

But Horn said the FIFA World Cup games that are scheduled to be played in Vancouver in June and July could add even more to the influx of unhoused and street people than usual in the Cowichan community.

He said that during the Winter Olympics that were hosted by Vancouver in 2010, city authorities were put under a lot of pressure to ensure the city looked “clean and happy” while it was in the international spotlight.

“That pressure pushed a lot of people off the streets of the city during the Olympics and they flooded into Victoria, Nanaimo, Courtenay and all regions of the Island, and that could happen again,” Horn said.

“We have been talking about developing operational plans to respond if we get a flood of folks coming that are displaced by events in the Lower Mainland. What we’ll get in the Cowichan Valley remains to be seen, but people can arrive here as it is a free country.”

Horn said local authorities are keeping a sharp eye on the unhoused and others who are coming into the community in regards to what are they all about and why are they here, and they pay close attention to the new ones.

“As we all probably know from the anecdotal evidence, we’re actually seeing a bit of a rougher crowd (coming to the community),” he said.

“(The unhoused and street people) in Cowichan started as local and a small scale number of people that are a comfortable and friendly bunch, but as more and more people become homeless, they push themselves out of the bigger centres and end up in small towns like ours.”

Horn said Cowichan is seeing people coming here that are not as benign as the locals, and the municipality is working with the RCMP to identify those they think could be a threat to public safety and are putting steps into place to address them directly.

He said the plan to deal with them is still in its formative stages.

“We want to make it clear to them that, just because you came to this community doesn’t mean that you get to own the streets,” Horn said.

“We’ll tell them that this is our community and these are the rules and this is how you have behave to be here, so we’re going to do our level best to manage that influx, the folks who are coming here. The pressure we put on them, hopefully, will make these (rough) folks who decide this is a the place to be think that over again and maybe decide they should move on to some other community.”