More homeless people living in Vancouver

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VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – The annual City of Vancouver homeless count finds there was a total of 1,847 people without a place to live in a 2016 snapshot. The highest number in almost a decade.

That’s up by about 100 over 2015’s numbers – or a six per cent increase. Breaking it down further, more than 500 of the city’s homeless are on the street while just over 1,300 are in shelters.

High rents, low vacancies and inadequate welfare rates are all contributing factors.

“The homeless count results are disappointing, considering the aggressive approach the City has taken over the last five years help people who are homeless and to address the root causes of homelessness,” says Mayor Gregor Robertson.

“We as a council made a commitment to end street homeless by 2015. We pushed hard for BC and Federal support on this because those levels of government are absolutely responsible for housing and dealing with homelessness. As a city we will do everything in our power, use every single tool we have. Unprecedented dollars [have been] invested to solve homelessness.”

Robertson believes all levels of government need to step in to help. “Provincial and Federal governments have not focused on preventing homelessness and barley keeping up with building housing at this point. We have a real housing crunch in Vancouver and that hasn’t helped either. People are getting pushed down and out.”

“[We] definitely need very urgent action to prevent homelessness going into next winter. We saw a huge boost in the number of people who were homeless for less than one year. A lot of young people, a lot of people new to it that have lost their housing and that is what has to be stopped.”

He wants to see the province do more for people living on social assistance and adjust rates that haven’t been increased in years. “It is a failure of our whole system, when all three levels of government can’t get it together to solve homelessness.”

According to the count, 61 per cent of people in Vancouver without a place to live had been homeless for less than a year, while 78 per cent were facing a physical and/or mental health condition. Seventy-one per cent of those who have been in Vancouver for up to a year came from outside Metro Vancouver.

 

 

City of Vancouver receives failing grades in tackling the housing crisis

A “report card” from the Carnegie Community Action Project gives the City of Vancouver a failing grade in many aspects of tackling the housing crisis.

Among other areas, the city has received an “F” in protecting existing affordable housing, taking actions to improve SRO hotels, prioritizing social housing for the homeless, ending homelessness, the affordability of new rental units, and shelters for homeless people.

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