Battling cancer and attempting to get by on a fixed income in one of the world’s least affordable housing markets, he turned a Vancouver Tim Hortons into his makeshift home.

Now his death – while sitting alone at a table of the ubiquitous Canadian coffee chain – has cast a spotlight on the toll the city’s housing crisis is taking on Vancouver’s most vulnerable.

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Believed to be in his 70s and known to his friends as Ted, the man was a familiar figure at the Tim Hortons in the city’s downtown. Friends described him as a kind and easygoing man who had lived out the past decade at the 24-hour coffee shop, sleeping and eating at a table near the washroom.

Witnesses said he may have spent hours slumped at his table last week, unresponsive, before a passerby alerted staff.

“It is a nearly unimaginable scenario,” said Jeremy Hunka of the Union Gospel Mission. “To have somebody dying for hours in a public restaurant at a table, where customers are drinking their coffee, coming and going, and nobody is noticing this person’s dying breath.”

His death has prompted renewed scrutiny of the link between the city’s red hot property market – where the average cost of a detached home hovers around C$1.8m ($1.4m) – and levels of homelessness that have soared to record highs in recent years.

The number of homeless in the city is continuing to grow at a pace of about five people a week, said Hunka. “We need more housing, more supports, and more compassion.”

In the middle of the night, there are people sitting in fast food places because there’s nowhere safe for them to go

In Ted’s case, he had been struggling to cover the cost of food and housing on a limited government pension. “He had worked all his life, but at low-paying working-class jobs,” said Judy Graves, an advocate for the homeless. She met Ted about four years ago, after he had already been diagnosed with cancer.

For much of his life he had managed to scrape by, but an unexpected expense left him suddenly scrambling. Eventually he was left him without a roof over his head, she said.

Ted, who had never been involved with drugs and wasn’t a big drinker, was terrified at the prospect of seeking help in the city’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, where most of the city’s shelters and affordable housing are located, said Graves.

“And so he pretty much decided that he was just going to stay at the Tim Hortons where he still looked like a working-class guy, he blended into the population that came and went in that restaurant,” she said. “The wait list for senior’s housing is so long, he would have been dead before he got in, anyway.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Vancouver, where the average cost of a detached home hovers around C$1.8m. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Located a few blocks from Vancouver’s general hospital, the restaurant became his refuge as his body battled cancer, leaving him riddled with pain. While others patients were discharged to the comfort of their homes and into the care of friends and family, a lack of support for homeless people meant Ted had little option but to return to the Tim Hortons after being discharged. “That became his little home,” said Graves.

It’s a story playing out across the country, as 24-hour fast-food restaurants replace shelters, she said. “I’ve been in all major cities across Canada and the picture is exactly the same. In the middle of the night, there are people sitting in fast-food places because there’s nowhere safe for them to go.”

Vancouver’s rocketing housing costs have taken a particularly grave toll on those living on fixed incomes in the city. The number of homeless who are 55 years and over has soared from 10% in 2005 to 23% last year, according to the Union Gospel Mission.

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Many of them wouldn’t survive if it weren’t for the shelter offered by fast-food restaurants, said Graves. “I’m so grateful to those 24-hour restaurants because they’ve stepped up with old-fashioned neighbourly compassion and kindness in the way that the rest of society hasn’t.”

In a statement, Tim Hortons said it was reviewing the details of the incident. “Like other members of the community, we were saddened to hear this news,” it said. “The individual was a regular at the restaurant and will be missed.”

The fast-food sector – along with shopkeepers, transit officials and others – has been left to shoulder the responsibility of caring for those living on the streets, said Julian Somers of Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University. “We are forcing the issue into any place that has a bit of capacity to exercise some generosity, some warmth, some safety,” he said.

“You get a guy like Ted, who is not only homeless and very ill, but he’s put one and one together and realises that nobody cares about him,” he added. “So he’s just going to live out his days, knowing that he’s sick and more or less resigned to eventually, probably dying in the Tim Hortons that he called home. It’s an incredible indictment of our society.”