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Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart says it’s “devastating” to see the homeless count rise and the city needs more investment from Ottawa if it’s going to solve the problem.

Preliminary figures released Wednesday show the homeless count rose by two per cent to more than 2,200 in the past year, the same rate that it rose in the year previous.

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The figure means Vancouver has the highest per capita rate of homelessness for any major Canadian city, but Stewart says it would be worse if Vancouver and senior levels of government had not introduced aggressive measures to increase the supply of housing.

Those measures include 930 social and supportive homes built in 2018 and 606 temporary modular homes built and occupied in 2018 and early 2019.

Stewart said the fact that more than one quarter of survey respondents said they had been homeless for less than six months shows the affordability crisis remains alive and well, adding that solving the complicated problem requires co-operation across different levels of government.