Seeking Shelter on the Drive: How shelters fill an essential gap amid a dire housing shortage

Starting in 2018 and through the early COVID-19 pandemic, the provincial government made an unprecedented investment into supportive housing and shelters across the province. 

Between 2020 and 2021, BC Housing spent $403 million acquiring more than 50 properties, including nine hotels for temporary and long-term housing. In Vancouver alone, more than 600 housing units were opened.

Since BC Housing works with non-profit operators to run these spaces, the investment meant existing operators, like PHS Community Services Society, were asked to take on new facilities. 

The biggest increase in new operations for PHS at the time was for shelter spaces, Tanya Fader, PHS’s interim director of programs, told Vancity Lookout. “That was a big shift that seemed very hopeful at the time…but we’re in different times now,” she said. 

While shelters themselves are not a permanent solution, they serve a vital role in addressing the needs of an ever-growing homeless population, particularly as many supportive housing facilities have started to close. 

According to Jean Swanson, former city councillor and coordinator with the Carnegie Housing Project, this council has presided over the loss of 391 supportive housing units, namely, 98 units at Larwill Place, 110 units at the Luugat Hotel, and 39 units at Aneki Housing for Women, among others. 

With the city also placing an effective “pause” on net-new supportive housing, advocates say the supply of this type of housing continues to lag behind demand. 

Homelessness is on the rise in Vancouver, with over 2,700 people without a fixed address in 2025, according to official reports, up 12 per cent from 2023. These estimates are broadly understood to undercount the number of people experiencing homelessness by as much as 20 per cent. The Carnegie Housing Project estimates that number is well over 3,000. 

With so much need for permanent, affordable housing, and a supply that cannot keep up, shelters have been trying to fill gaps, but they are being stretched to their limits. There are only about 1,600 active shelter spaces in the city, about half the estimated demand.  

“There’s a lot of things that [we’re] trying to do for people, but with the way that services are available currently, it takes a really long time to get anyone connected,” Amy Widmer, PHS’s senior housing manager, told Vancity Lookout. 

Official city reports show that nearly 80 per cent of respondents had been homeless for more than a year. Even with the help of service providers, Widmer said that it is not unusual for the people she works with to remain homeless for upwards of seven years. 

“It’s not because [people] don’t want housing,” she said. “It’s because there are so many barriers to getting inside the way that things are structured.”

When Widmer meets someone through the shelters at the PHS, she starts a long process of helping them apply for available housing in the area. 

The first several steps involve filling out a lot of paperwork, beginning with a Supportive Housing Registry Form and another form called a Coordinated Access and Allocation Form. 

Then she sits down with clients to complete a Vulnerability Assessment Tool (VAT), a long-form essay that asks people to disclose information about their current situation and past experiences with homelessness, assault, mental health issues, and more. 

“It is incredibly traumatic to go through [the VAT] with people,” said Widmer. “It asks a lot of really intense personal questions. I’ve never done one [that has] not ended up with me and the other person crying at the end.” 

Once these forms have been completed, people are eligible to have their application brought to the “Coordinate Access and Allocations Table”; a group of representatives from BC Housing, various service providers and advocates who meet weekly to discuss what units are available and determine who should be prioritized. 

“It’s not a waitlist [that goes in order] like people assume,” said Widmer. “And it shouldn’t be, because that doesn’t address urgency…there are situations where somebody is so medically and socially vulnerable that they should be prioritized even if they haven’t been on the list as long as someone else.”

The result of this system, Widmer said, is that housing is often prioritized for people who either  have the capacity to actively engage and make themselves known to a variety of service providers, or those who are so vulnerable that a lack of immediate housing could be a death sentence. 

“We don’t have enough units, and so we don’t have the freedom to prioritize folks based on anything outside of whether you might die if you have to be homeless again for another winter,” said Widmer, “And that’s really, really hard.” 

While the population they serve is “incredibly diverse,” Widmer said that in recent years she has seen a huge rise in the number of seniors accessing PHS’ shelter services. “There are a lot of older folks who were working class and [survived] on that precipice for a long time,” she explained. “They’ve now been priced out.” 

While she described some of these seniors as people who “may have been regulars at the local dive bar” and who "occasionally dabbled” in other substances, many of these people start relying on drugs to survive the conditions of homelessness.

Many people use stimulants like methamphetamine to stay awake at night to protect themselves and their belongings. The chronic stress and physical toll of homelessness can also lead to self-soothing and substance dependence. 

Homelessness has been made all the more urgent by the increasing rates of death and disability, like traumatic brain injury, as a result of the illicit drug supply. The severity of other medical complications has also notably increased, Widmer said.

“With the drug supply the way it is, we’re seeing a cognitive and physical shift in the community,” she said. “It used to be that you could be homeless for ten years and you wouldn't be suffering from [medical conditions like] scoliosis, edema, cellulitis and dermatitis…the level of acuity that we see in the shelters now is so much higher.” 

PHS has set up programs to address the issue, including an outreach nursing team for wound care and an antibiotic IV treatment space. But Widmer and Fader said that much more is needed. 

“People are losing limbs because these [chronic] infections are so bad,” Widmer described. “Even if people have [a primary care doctor], and most don’t … if their legs are that messed up, how do they get there?”

While the problems affecting people experiencing homelessness are layered and many solutions may seem out of reach, Widmer said that addressing issues like access to medical care, safe supply and housing would all greatly improve the quality of life for people in the community. 

Housing supply is the biggest one, she said. “We know that prolonged periods of homelessness lead to far more mental health disorders [and physical disabilities],” Widmer added. “Everything gets better if people are housed faster, but that takes a supply - and we don’t have a supply.” 

Fader and Widmer agree that another key issue is the definition of “housing.” For example, the city’s homelessness count does not include people currently living in SROs, or single-room occupancy units. 

While SROs do provide basic shelter, rates of disease transmission from shared bathroom and kitchen facilities in these buildings are quite high. Many of these buildings have fallen into disrepair. 

“It’s wonderful to…see someone filled with so much gratitude and relief when they see that room, and also it’s devastating because you’re like, ‘nobody should be thankful for this,’” Widmer said. 

According to the Carnegie Housing Project, Vancouver has about 6,500 SROs in need of replacement, with roughly 400 units currently vulnerable to foreclosure or owned by “disreputable” landlords. 

“For housing to get built, we have to get funding from all levels of government,” said Swanson, pointing out that over the next five years, Ottawa has only put forward $1 billion for supportive and transitional housing. For comparison, Canada has pledged more than $63 billion, or 2 per cent of its national gross domestic product, on defence spending for this year alone. 

Swanson estimates that the federal contribution will only build about 2,000 units. “We have over 60,000 [people experiencing homelessness] in Canada…The [federal government’s] budget contribution more or less guarantees that homelessness is going to increase,” she said. 

Multiple experts that Vancity Lookout spoke with pointed to Finland as a promising model for Canada to address its homelessness crisis. Finland’s approach centres housing as a human right and prioritizes permanent housing with 24-hour staff support to take pressure off other public services. 

While Canada has recognized “adequate housing” as a human right since the 1980s, advocates and international committees have argued that the country has fallen short in meaningfully addressing the housing crisis.

The PHS Community Services Society is no stranger to fielding concerns from vocal neighbours opposed to shelters and supportive housing opening in their community. 

“Anytime we’re opening anything, there’s going to be some pushback,” said Fader, adding that generally speaking, there is more opposition when shelters are opened outside of the Downtown Eastside. 

 “When homeless people have somewhere to go inside, whether it's a 24/7 shelter or housing, they're less likely to be in your space and in your storefront doorways,” Fader says in response to neighbours’ concerns about more people loitering outside supportive housing and shelter services sites.  

When Margaret Mitchell Place, a supportive modular housing building, opened near Olympic Village in 2018, Fader said many neighbours had initially expressed concerns. 

“We offered tours of the building so that people could see what it looked like…And over the course of a weekend, something like 1,100 people came through,” Fader said. 

PHS engaged with the community extensively ahead of the opening. “We’d spoken to a lot of people before we opened. You could just see them relaxing as we were talking to them,” she said, adding that a lot of concerned locals hadn’t previously realized that the facility would include 24/7 staff on site and other supports for residents. 

“By the time we opened the building, a whole bunch of people from the co-op had baked goods for people moving in,” Fader described. “The kids from the elementary school had made every single room a welcome card and [given] them a little plant, so it just shows you the importance of that engagement.”

PHS held regular meetings with the community once a month after the site opened, but she said that “they didn’t really last beyond six months… no one was showing up because there weren’t actually any problems.” 

When shelters operate 24/7, are adequately staffed, and people are well supported, Fader said the overwhelming result is that these facilities create more stability, not less, for both individuals and surrounding communities. 

“We find there’s a stabilization that happens for people when they don’t have to be in survival mode all of the time,” she said. “We’ve shown what we can do with 24/7 sheltering… People are much more secure and less likely to cause trouble out in the community. We can get them connected to other resources.” 

For Fader and Widmer, an investment in permanent, affordable housing for the city’s most vulnerable would greatly benefit other sectors. Research has shown that supportive housing reduces pressure on public service costs. 

A person experiencing homelessness who is also dealing with addiction or mental illness will use roughly $81,000 (adjusted for inflation) per year in health care and corrections services. In contrast, that same person in supportive housing will use just $54,000. 

A 2019 B.C. study found that supportive housing residents were 64 per cent less likely than emergency-shelter clients to require ambulance services, and the average hospital stay for supportive housing residents was half as long as for those who accessed emergency shelters. 

“Even if you don’t understand what people are going through and you’re struggling to find empathy for where they’re at, if you’re a fiscal conservative, you should love us,” Fader argued. 

Between the pause on supportive housing, the inflation of police budgets, and the increased calls for involuntary drug treatment, Fader said that in “every political cycle, the most vulnerable people get used as a political football…But I would say it's worse now than ever, and that impacts the work that city planners can do.” 

Even though shelters are “an abomination that shouldn’t exist,” according to Widmer — a reference to the need for more affordable, permanent housing options — for now, shelters still fill an important gap in the system. 

There are many ways to measure success for the people Widmer works with. She said that can look like securing housing, a client learning they can count on staff to see them through a particular problem, or those who previously accessed their shelters returning to volunteer. 

“That’s a real sign that what we do in these spaces really matters and makes people feel seen…human, and valued,” Widmer said. 

While it can be hard to remain hopeful in the face of such enormous, systemic obstacles, “the community itself [is what gives me hope],” Widmer added.

“These folks are so resilient, and if they can have hope, then I'd better have hope too. If I don’t, that’s a disservice to them.”