Sadly, next month will mark the seventh year the city will conduct an annual homeless count.
That's six years of counting homeless people in a city where you can pick up a fixer-upper on the West Side for more than $2 million.
But that's life, right?
Depends what your politics is, I guess.
But from what I've seen from my desk window — men with carts, tents pitched in the alley and sleeping nests of mouldy blankets — there will be reason for another count in 2017.
And another in 2018 and likely beyond.
That's not cynicism, that's reality.
As we learned in last year's count, Mayor Gregor Robertson didn't meet his goal of ending what he calls "street homelessness" by 2015. In fact, he wasn't even close.
The city's 2015 count recorded 488 people on the street and 1,258 living/surviving in some form of shelter, for a total of 1,746 men and women without a permanent place to call home.
Apparently, it's going to get worse.
I first heard housing advocate Jean Swanson give council that warning late last year. Now it's Green Party Coun. Adriane Carr's turn. She's drafted a motion that goes before council this week, predicting this year's homeless count will eclipse 2015 numbers.
Carr knows this because:
A) She topped the polls in the 2014 election.
B) She conducted her own count.
or, C) She just has a feeling.
Actually, none of the above.
Carr believes this year's count will "likely go up by hundreds" because of a spike in rents in single-room-occupancy hotels, fewer rooms available at the $375 per month shelter rate and the loss of temporary housing, specifically the expiration of the city's lease on the 157-unit former Quality Inn hotel.
She also points to the potential conversion of low-income hotels and other affordable housing in Chinatown, Strathcona and the rest of the Downtown Eastside. That hunch is based on the demand that will be created for short-term stay accommodation associated with the eventual move of St. Paul's Hospital from the West End to the False Creek Flats.
Despite the provincial government's renovation of more than 20 low-income hotels, the construction of 13 social housing buildings, continued funding of shelters and monthly rent supplements given to low-income tenants, Carr doesn't think Premier Christy Clark and friends are doing enough to end homelessness.
The feds could do a lot more, too, she said.
Although she acknowledged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is responding favourably to the mayor's pitch to have the feds contribute $500 million to build 3,500 units of housing on 20 city sites, that deal could take years.
Carr said the need is now.
So what's her solution?
It involves the mayor writing another letter to Clark asking for help. Specifically, Carr said, more rent supplements are needed. So is more data on children leaving care, people leaving prisons and hospitals with no fixed address. That information could help find housing for those people and keep them off the streets.
The big ask though, is nothing new really: Give the city enough cash to amplify the city's efforts to "acquire, upgrade and build sufficient social and supportive housing to end the city's growing homelessness crisis."
Sounds so simple in a motion.
As simple as counting one, two, three, four, five...
This year's count goes ahead March 9 and 10.
@Howellings
