A middle-aged man in gold chains and Adidas shorts is yelling loudly into a phone about “politically correct maggots” and making racist slurs. Another man, wearing black dress shoes with a leather jacket, sleeps facedown on a table, raising his head periodically in his sleep and puckering his lips. Neither arouses any obvious interest from the other customers.

It is not surprising that a permanently homeless man would feel as though he could blend into this Vancouver branch of Tim Hortons, a 24-hour donut and coffee shop, at all hours. This is where Ted came every day for 10 years. Staff members and regulars alike knew his rolling suitcase, his handlebar mustache and his scowling disposition. It was not unusual to find him sleeping in the restaurant.

But when another homeless friend found Ted slumped over a table at 3am on the last day of May this year, he thought the way Ted’s head rested askew on the edge of the table did not look right. The friend noticed a bad smell, saw black bile pooling on the table and touched Ted’s hands: they were cold.

Still, staff were so used to Ted that they needed to be convinced to call 911. An ambulance took Ted to Vancouver General Hospital, where he was officially declared dead. His friend said he overheard a paramedic speculating that Ted might have been dead for 12 hours.

As the story made headlines in Canada and internationally – that a man living in a coffee shop for 10 years had died in it, too – more details emerged about Ted’s life. He was in 70s, had terminal cancer, and although he had been homeless for a decade he had also worked most of his life in low-wage jobs. Since retiring he received a government pension, but it was not enough for him to afford housing – so he lived at the Tim Hortons, a place where he could eat, sleep and wash up while passing himself off as a working-class guy on a coffee break.

This is supposed to be Canada. Shouldn’t we be held to a higher standard in these issues of homelessness? Andy Yan

Ted’s living situation was shocking, but it is mirrored across Vancouver, a city that is in the grips of an unprecedented housing crisis. A dwelling here now costs $1.4m (£800,000) on average, making it the least affordable city in North America. Most observers point the finger at some combination of foreign capital coupled with a shortage of homes: the vacancy rate is less than 1% and nearly half of the renters in the city, where a one-bedroom apartment averages $2,060 per month, are paying more than they can afford.

One of the results has been a sharp rise in the city’s homeless population – a 25% increase since 2015 – of which Ted’s death was a very public reminder. “[It’s] symbolic of the inequality of Vancouver,” says urban planner Andy Yan of Ted’s story. “This is supposed to be Canada. Shouldn’t we be held to a higher standard in these issues of homelessness?”

Sacrifice a fixed address – or leave



Canada, however, isn’t alone. The housing crisis has hit major metropolitan centres across the world. According to a 2017 report by the World Resources Institute, 330m urban families do not have housing that is “adequate, secure and affordable”. The number is set to grow to 440 million households by 2025.

But the steep ascent in Vancouver has been particularly remarkable. Real estate prices began to rise sharply in 2003; they have nearly quadrupled since. In 2015, the average price of a detached home went up $193,000, nearly triple Vancouver’s average household income of $72,662.

A homeless woman lies on a Vancouver street. Photograph: Andy Clark / Reuters/REUTERS

This has put unprecedented pressure on young renters such as Danielle Eastveld. Last year, Eastveld took what would once have been an unusual step for someone with a law degree: she gave notice on her apartment and moved into a motorhome that she bought for $4,000 off Craigslist.

A thirtysomething bartender, she said she found herself crushed by what she calls the “trickle-down effect”: as dual-income families who could once afford to buy a house are forced to rent, it becomes harder for everyone else to find affordable housing – including the working class and seniors like Ted, as well as younger millennials like herself.

She lived for a time on an industrial road that is popular with other Vancouverites living in cars. They are predominantly male, and tend to have fewer options than Eastveld, who considers her living situation a choice. After getting tickets from the city, she now rents a parking spot in an alley. By sacrificing a fixed address, she saves about $1,000 a month.

“I need a nest egg,” she says. “I’m getting to an age where the paycheque-to-paycheque life is getting old.”

Other friends, she says, have decided to pack up and leave Vancouver; those who remain say they are struggling to adjust – to the rising costs of living, to “renovictions” (a term coined for when a landlord evicts a tenant in order to sell or raise the rent) and to displacement.

“Quite a few friends were skeptical,” she says about her rent-free life. “Now they’re jealous.”

Stability comes first

The poorest in the city, for whom market-rate rents are unfathomable, must turn to government assistance. There, they say they find a shortage of units and long wait times.

Like Ted, Jacques Lacroix worked almost all his life. Four years ago, while working at a demolition job, he fell and broke his back. He says his boss lied about the accident, preventing him from collecting compensation. Soon afterwards, he joined the quarter of Vancouver’s homeless who sleep outside rather than in shelters.

Neatly attired in a black baseball cap and crisp black jeans, Lacroix, 59, is waiting for lunch in the Union Gospel Mission (UGM), which serves 800 meals daily. Last night, it turned away 17 people from its 72 shelter beds.

Lacroix’s application for social housing is considered low-priority because “guys like me” – physically and mentally sound – “can take care of ourselves. If you’re a drug addict, they’re going to pick you up”.

The neighbourhood where UGM is located, the Downtown Eastside, has high rates of mental illness, HIV infection, poverty and addiction. Nonnie, 39, a member of Squamish First Nation, has struggled with the latter. She lives in a shelter for women while she waits for a government-subsidized home.

“I can’t pursue anything else until I have housing,” Nonnie says. “You have to be stable in order to do anything else.”

People loiter in the entrance to a Downtown Eastside alleyway known as ‘Crack Alley’. The neighbourhood is known for high rates of mental illness, HIV infection, poverty and addiction. Photograph: Richard Lam/AP

Many advocates agree with her: that stable housing is a necessary first step to addressing the opioid epidemic that has ravaged many neighbourhoods in North America. Local and provincial governments in Canada have committed to a series of measures, including $66m to build 600 units of temporary modular housing throughout Vancouver. These prefabricated, three-story buildings take only a few months to raise, and have individual 250 sq ft suites with private kitchens. The first of these developments, in the Marpole neighbourhood, were set aside for residents with disabilities or those older than 45.

“We’ve had some great stories about people’s lives being changed for the better,” says Abi Bond, the city’s director of affordable housing projects. Ted’s death was a shock, she says. “He is exactly the kind of person we’re trying to house” – a non-violent senior.

Indeed, more seniors live in poverty (8.8%) in British Columbia than anywhere in Canada]; the rate has doubled since 2000. According to Stanley Woodvine, the blogger who broke the news of Ted’s death, the physical limitations of being senior (not to mention having cancer, as Ted did) compound the challenges of homelessness.

Woodvine, 56, was a graphic designer and illustrator but had been living on the street for 14 years when he wrote a short post about Ted’s death on his blog; the story was subsequently republished by a local free weekly before getting picked up by global media. He writes his blog on a laptop in a McDonald’s near the Tim Hortons where Ted died, as a portal for non-homeless readers to understand life on the streets. Another recent post, inspired by Ted, offered etiquette for checking in on homeless people who appear to be sleeping.

“I don’t think he was never not scared,” he says, explaining that even if Ted had been offered a bed in a shelter, as a senior he would have found himself vulnerable living among younger, sometimes violent drug users. Woodvine wants to see a facility dedicated to homeless seniors, just as there are for women and children.

The housing crisis is even more fraught for seniors who have accessibility or language issues, including immigrants. Yulanda Lui works at the Yarrow Society, a group that connects youth to about 200 elderly Chinese a year. “Gentrification and housing are big topics,” she says. Upscale boutiques and coffee shops are pushing out greengrocers and other long-standing businesses in Chinatown. “Seniors have felt like their food sources have been disappearing nearby. They’re struggling to find affordable services.”

The Millennium Chinatown Gate in Vancouver. Photograph: Michael Wheatley/Getty Images/All Canada Photos

The stigma of homelessness is another problem for seniors, says Woodvine. Though he never knew Ted, he recognized him in their neighbourhood, Fairview Slopes, and suspects that he knows why he chose to live in the Tim Hortons rather than move from shelter to shelter. “His whole thing was he didn’t want people to know he was homeless,” he says. “There’s a mentality that you skulk, you hide.”

‘The city of the lottery’

After slashing spending on social housing in the 1990s, the federal government has begun to act. Last November, it announced a $40bn, 10-year national strategy that treats housing as a human right. Vancouver has also launched a three-year action plan that includes offering housing for renters who are priced-out renters; the goal is to pay for it by doing deals with developers in exchange for “density bonuses” (taller condo towers). “It’s not just homeless people who need housing,” Bond says. “There are many people struggling to find a way to stay and make a life here.”

Demonstrators gather protesting against high housing prices for single family homes in downtown Vancouver on 23 May 2015. Photograph: Jimmy Jeong / Reuters/Reuters

Sometimes, that means not waiting for government help. Last November, a series of community-led protests successfully blocked a proposed nine-storey condo tower in Chinatown. “This community was built in an act of resistance,” observes Lenée Son, the coordinator of the Carnegie Community Action Project, noting the concentrations of Chinese, Japanese and black populations who settled in the area to survive systemic racism.

Without such resistance and intervention, however, the housing crisis could radically remake the face of the city – and our notions of home. Andy Yan, adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, fears a return to the shanty towns formed in the city during the Great Depression.

For Yan, Vancouver has become “the city of the lottery” – viable only to those who are born into money, bought their home early enough, or have government-subsidized housing. “The ovarian lottery, the real estate lottery, or the social housing lottery,” as he puts it. “That’s not the Vancouver I knew.”

There is another danger, namely that lives – and deaths – like Ted’s become commonplace and cease to shock. Yan believes bold measures are needed. He quotes Maya Angelou: “‘Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency.’ Well, we’re going to need a hell of a lot of courage.”