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The agency also found Young a temporary spot this week in one of the 20 temporary apartments. He’s been told he can stay there for three months and is still looking for a permanent solution. But the most Young can afford for rent is $700 a month, which he worries will be next to impossible to find in the Lower Mainland where he wants to stay.

Dodd said more subsidized, B.C. Housing apartments are desperately needed for seniors, to ensure they don’t have to spend more than 30 per cent of their income on rent.

“The challenge in Vancouver is we have the highest cost of living in the country, the highest cost of rental in the country and dealing with the lowest availability of rental properties,” Dodd said. “The best case scenario is they have a family member they can rely on and the worst case scenario is they end up in a homeless shelter.”

The society’s outreach workers have seen seniors in their 80s in homeless shelters, and in the past couple of weeks have worked with three found living in their cars.

He said the average length of stay for a senior living in a shelter in 2015 was 23.5 days compared to 9.1 days in 2005.

“The hardest to house are those seniors with a disability. We are being told by landlords, to our face, for the first time they don’t want to take seniors because they don’t want to deal with dementia or God forbid having someone pass away in their unit,” said Dodd.

“It’s a landlord’s market. The bottom line is we need affordable, safe and appropriate housing for seniors on a fixed budget. There’s a lot of talk about affordable housing for seniors but the reality is when all they can afford is $500 a month the $1,000 units coming up for rent don’t really help.”

According to most recent Homeless Count, which tallies seniors living in shelters, on the street or couch-surfing with relatives and friends, there were 371 homeless seniors in 2014 in Metro Vancouver.

kpemberton@postmedia.com

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