Vision Coun. Andrea Reimer and Rena Kendall-Craden, the city’s director of corporate communications, were among those who conducted the city’s homeless count in March | Photo: Dan Toulgoet





The number of homeless people in Vancouver has hit the highest level since the city began counting those living on the street and in shelters.

A city report released May 31 revealed 1,847 people were recorded as homeless when city staff, politicians and volunteers conducted a count over two days in March.

The total surpasses the previous high of 1,803 people counted in 2014. The city has led or participated in homeless counts in Vancouver and the region since 2005.

“They are sobering numbers,” said Vision Coun. Geoff Meggs after hearing city staff’s presentation at city hall on the 2016 homeless count.

Of the 1,847 counted, 539 were recorded as living on the street and 1,308 in some form of shelter. Last year, 488 people were on the street and 1,258 in shelters.

The increase in homelessness has come despite the provincial government opening 13 supportive housing buildings in recent years and the city securing four former hotels to house more than 400 people at risk of homelessness.

An increase in shelter spaces and additional rent supplements given to people to find housing were also added in the last year. Still, the homeless population increased and city staff’s analysis shows no encouraging evidence to reverse the trend.

The unpredictable marker in each count is the number of new homeless, with 61% (about 1,127 people) telling volunteers this year they had been homeless for less than one year. Another factor was new arrivals to Vancouver, with 13 from the region, 22 from other parts of the province, 17 from Alberta, 13 from other provinces and nine from outside Canada.

While the Vision-led administration of Mayor Gregor Robertson has repeatedly lobbied senior governments for more housing, this year the Vision team has shifted the focus to the provincial government needing to do more to address the main drivers of homelessness.

Those drivers include poverty, lack of treatment for addiction and mental health, low welfare and disability rates, young people aging out of foster care at an early age and high rents.

“You can build a lot of housing but until you turn off that tap, homelessness will exist and it’s showing up all over the province,” Vision Coun. Kerry Jang told reporters.

He pointed to Maple Ridge, Abbotsford and Victoria as cities seeing an increase in homelessness and facing the same problems as Vancouver in getting people into permanent housing.

While the findings not only show the desperate situation of people, it also dispelled a common myth that homeless people are welfare bums who don’t want to work: 23%, or 257, of the homeless in this year’s count said they had a job and 27% had some form of disability.

Other findings of the report included:

· The majority of the homeless population were men, with 61% 24 years old or younger.

· Forty per cent of the population had a mental illness, 53% had an addiction and 42% said they had a medical condition or illness.

· Thirty-eight per cent were aboriginal and 13% identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning and two-spirited.

· Eleven per cent were military veterans.

The mayor had promised to end street homelessness in 2015. As he told reporters last spring and reiterated again May 31, he said Vancouver can’t solve homelessness without the help of senior governments.

“No city has done as much as Vancouver has done in recent years to tackle homelessness,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have enough support from the B.C. and federal government to eliminate homelessness on our streets. We’re just going to keep working at it, though. There’s no time to give up on this.”

Jean Swanson of the Carnegie Community Action Project circulated a “report card” to reporters May 31, giving Vancouver an “F” for its inability to end homelessness and prioritizing social housing for homeless people.

Swanson said she calculated that less than 6% of new social housing -- excluding the 13 supportive housing buildings -- built since 2012 is guaranteed at the $375-per month shelter rate.

“We desperately need more social housing that low-income people can afford,” she said, noting the new construction of such housing has to return to 1970s levels when homelessness wasn’t at crisis levels.

NPA George Affleck said he was calling on the mayor to hold a national conference on homelessness that would involve Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“Let’s get together as a country, let’s get the prime minister here, let’s get the premier here and let’s get them in a room and start talking about how we can solve this problem – not just in Vancouver, but as a country,” he said. “We are not solving it on our own. We can’t. We can put hundreds of millions of dollars into this, which we are, and it’s not making a dent. It’s gotten worse.”

The federal government has promised to inject cash into Vancouver and the province to build more housing. The provincial government has also promised more than $350 million for affordable housing.

The Vancouver Courier spoke to Housing Minister Rich Coleman last week and told him the homeless count details would likely lead to criticism of his government.

“It’s always a quote you can be guaranteed of on this file,” Coleman said of the expected finger-pointing. “But we’ve done more than any other jurisdiction in North America as a province with regards to this file.”

For more stories from the Vancouver Courier, visit www.vancourier.com.

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