Article content continued

“We’re not asking for handouts. We could pitch in some money when we get our cheques,” she says, referring to social assistance and disability payments.

Photo by NICK PROCAYLO / PNG

Simons has recently returned to the camp after a year away. She and her husband were living in a rented house where she prided herself on cooking for friends, sometimes serving spaghetti to a crowd of 15 who showed up at supper time.

“My bleeding heart gets me in trouble all the time,” she admits. “We lost control of the house.”

Her landlord told her the property would eventually be bulldozed for a new development and Simons was evicted. So she returned to the homeless camp where she previously lived for two years before being hospitalized with pneumonia.

“We’ll probably spend the winter out here,” she says. “With how much rent costs, and three dogs, I can’t find another place.”

• • •

Simons is one of hundreds of homeless people living in Chilliwack, a city that, up until a few months ago, didn’t have a significant homeless population.

Volunteers counted 73 homeless people in Chilliwack in the 2014 Fraser Valley Regional District homeless count. Numbers began to rise this summer and Chilliwack Mayor Sharon Gaetz now estimates there are up to 300 people there without a home, including those staying in the 30 shelter beds available at the Salvation Army.

It’s a similar story in a number of Lower Mainland cities. Service providers interviewed by Postmedia News said they believe homeless numbers in their communities have doubled, or in some cases tripled, in the last two years. They’re predicting dramatic increases when Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley Regional District conduct a new homeless count this March.