Locals working on housing issues told Coast Reporter the 2023 point in time (PIT) homeless count isn’t a true picture of the number of unhoused people in our area. Results showing 97 people experiencing homelessness (up from 84 in 2020) were released Oct. 5 by BC Housing.
Numbers higher than PIT count shows
“The [count] data may have been accurate in March when it was conducted but it is not accurate now,” local coordinator of the provincially funded count on the Coast, Rod Rissanen, stated in an Oct. 9 interview.
Rissanen said that people without housing have arrived on the Coast since the count, “blowing up” the population of an encampment near the supportive housing complex on Sechelt’s Hightide Avenue. Rissanen is a resident of that building who has spent the past four years in roles ranging from count coordinator to organizer of temporary work opportunities and overdose prevention site shifts. Through those, he reported being “on a first name basis” with most Sechelt people experiencing longer-term homelessness.
“There’s now a lot of new faces on the Coast. I’ve really seen it explode to the point where I only know about half the people in the tent encampment now,” Rissanen stated. His estimate was at least 20 to 25 recent arrivals are now sheltering near his home’s doorstep.
In addition, the PIT count method, in this case tallying input from those who self-report as unhoused over a 24-hour period, has “serious limitations” according to the Sunshine Coast’s housing coordinator, Kelly Foley. In her view, the number reported “represents the absolute minimum number of people who are experiencing homelessness."
In an email, Foley explained these processes often don’t include individuals who are not accessing services, like food banks or shelters, as they might not know about the opportunity to participate. The limited 24-hour count duration means that people who may be housed on that day but who live without a guarantee of continued residency are excluded, she wrote.
“Also, the rural nature of the Sunshine Coast, and the fact that we are spread across an 85-kilometre peninsula, makes it particularly challenging to collect data from people who are unhoused, who may be living in the forest, on a boat, or in a vehicle,” Foley wrote.
She quoted a Globe and Mail article that stated, "typically six to 10 times as many people experience homelessness in a year as are counted in a single night. Homelessness is endlessly fluid, with people steadily flowing in and out of shelters, couch-surfing or sleeping on the streets."
Applying a mid-range multiple of eight to one, Foley said a more accurate local estimate would be that there are “about 776 who have experienced homelessness in 2023."
Rissanen said outreach in this year’s count was wider than in the ones conducted locally in 2020 and 2018, in an effort to include some of the Coast’s “hidden homeless". He said that for the first time the shíshálh Nation was involved and information was gathered in Pender Harbour.
There was also greater involvement of people with “lived experience of homelessness” in collecting count data. “One good thing about calling on those members is that they know where their peers are hiding, they know where to go looking,” he stated.
Where can the count data be useful?
Asked what he saw in the results reported, Rissanen focused on the health data shared. That showed those who reported issues with addiction rose to 74 per cent of those counted, up from 41 per cent in 2018. Three-quarters of the 2023 respondents said that two or more health issues impacted their ability to retain housing, up from just over half who made that statement in 2018. He said he is hopeful that groups like local government can use that data to support applications for funding to expand not only housing supply but local services for people experiencing homelessness, such as accessing the soon-to-be vacant Shorncliffe facility for an addictions treatment site.
In a sobering summary from his overdose prevention site experience, Rissanen said, “We need to deal with the addiction first through treatment and recovery, then we can look at housing and then we can look at jobs. Without recovery if we give addicts housing, I have seen it, they go to their room, they use and they die.”
Our count compared to other communities
All areas covered by the B.C. government-funded PIT homelessness counts in 2020 or 2021 had higher numbers of unhoused in their 2023 counts. Locally, that increase was about 15 per cent, the fourth lowest rate of change reported and similar to the situation in Squamish which saw the unhoused count go up by 11 percent. Compared to 2020, the numbers tallied in the Comox Valley more than doubled to 272 and in Cranbrook, this year’s count was 90 per cent higher at 116. The area with the highest number tabulated this year was Vernon at 279 and the lowest count of 52 came in from Dawson Creek. Powell River was part of this count for the first time in 2023 and recorded 126 individuals experiencing homelessness.
