Anyone who thinks Chilliwack is a good place to ship homeless people from other communities, may want to think again.
“Chilliwack is full,” said Mayor Ken Popove, in his recent report to council.
Chilliwack has become the community with the most shelter beds per capita in the entire Lower Mainland region, and has gained a reputation for being the perfect place to access services for the unhoused.
“There is no perfect place,” Popove said noting that some communities have refused to do their share in terms of advocating for, and building the necessary supportive housing infrastructure that Chilliwack has.
With events for the 2026 FIFA World Cup looming on the horizon in Vancouver, Popove said there doesn’t seem to be a concrete plan by City of Vancouver to address homelessness other than transporting the unhoused people out of the five-block radius around the sporting events.
The mayor said he heard about a man being dropped off in Chilliwack to access services here who showed up in the local ER. He told a medical professional that he’d been dropped off with a couple of hundred bucks in his pocket.
The man had been assured that Chilliwack was a “great place to go,” where he could find “a bed, three meals a day, and cheaper drugs,” the mayor recounted.
“I know that report was anecdotal but the source was good,” Popove added, answering the question of how they could confirm that the unauthorized drop-offs were happening again.
“We’ve seen an explosion of people in Chilliwack just walking around like fricking zombies,” he said.
The most recent homeless-count numbers show that Chilliwack’s unhoused population went from 642 people in 2024, to 738 people in 2025, living both outdoors and in emergency shelters, according to the Point-in-Time counts.
Despite pushing the provincial government for a more equitable distribution of shelter beds across the region, Chilliwack still has the most shelter beds, per capita, than any other community in the Lower Mainland. Chilliwack has 248 shelter/supportive beds for example, while Abbotsford has 148, but Delta has none.
The responsibility for providing housing and health services do not fall within the city’s jurisdictions, but the city paid $5.2 million for related costs in 2025 to deal with the explosion in homelessness, on top of $4.9 million spent in 2024.
Popove said he’s liking the Seattle approach, which seems much more “proactive” in terms of securing housing for the unhoused, compared to Vancouver’s reliance on cleaning up its streets ahead of FIFA.
“Vancouver doesn’t seem to have a plan except to move the people out of the city,” Popove said. “At the end of the day, the message I want to get out there is, don’t send them to us – Chilliwack is full.”