Last month saw two significant reports released probing the Sunshine Coast housing crisis: the point-in-time homeless count analysis and the social and housing needs assessment.
Following our coverage of the point-in-time count, which enumerated 97 people experiencing homelessness on the Coast (widely acknowledged as a significant under count), Sunshine Coast Community Action Team coordinator Jaylene Marie Scheible got in touch to provide some context.
Jaylene has been working with the Sunshine Coast Community Action team for the past six months and at RainCity Housing as a frontline support worker and peer support specialist for three years.
Jaylene refuted earlier Coast Reporter reports that the encampment beside the (now reopening) Sechelt Shelter has seen an influx of off-Coast residents, saying most people staying there were long-time Coast residents.
“There’s definitely a climate of a lot of stigma around our unhoused community and addiction and how that plays into safety,” she said, adding that the common idea that the population of unhoused people has surged because people are coming from off-Coast is not true. (A statement the point-in-time analysis supports.) She adds that there are many layers to why homelessness has increased. “The bottom line has to do with the housing crisis here and the big gap in resources that we have for transitional and supportive housing and lack of services for people living in addiction, like detox and treatments.” (A gap the housing needs assessment also identifies.) She points to other gaps in housing, for low-income seniors – who comprised a quarter of those enumerated in the point-in-time count – and youth who cannot access shelters because they’re too young.
“I feel like the unhoused and people living in addiction and with complex mental health issues are being scapegoated as the cause of lack of safety in the community,” said Jaylene, adding that it’s a social issue other rural communities are also facing.
There is a lot of concern for community safety in Sechelt (hence the municipality spending $50,000 for three months of private security monitoring), and it’s a fair concern, the recent RCMP crime report shows a sharp rise in break-ins in downtown Sechelt.
However, Jaylene points to the other side of the coin, “The conversation for me is also that these people are human and that their needs and their needs for safety are not being met either.” (Exemplified by the high number of RCMP call-outs to encampments and related areas.)
This is not an issue that’s going away soon – it’s a slow road that needs considerable resources to fix. The housing needs assessment forecasts almost unfathomable need: more than 4,500 units of housing and related support on the Sunshine Coast over the next five years.
But as so many have pointed out, we have a moral responsibility to work on it. “Regardless of where they’re at, all humans deserve access to housing, to shelter, food, and community support and safety,” said Jaylene. “A person living in addiction deserves to have access to housing, deserves to have access to support in the community, regardless of whether or not they choose a path of recovery.”
Jaylene said the team is planning to bring forward an educational series in coming months, working with Sechelt’s Community Safety Committee. “To start having real conversations about these things, educating people about how and why folks are ending up unhoused and living in addiction.”
Anyone looking to get in touch with Jaylene can reach out to her at [email protected] or 604-212-1980.
Other notes:
• Another aspect of the count Jaylene highlighted was that 44 per cent of the people enumerated identified as Indigenous, which aligns with her experience where “at least half” of the people who are unhoused, living in addiction and who have complex mental health are Indigenous. She noted that people who are Indigenous but are not shíshálh do not have access to services for Indigenous people on the Coast as they’re not members of the Nation “In no way am I saying that shíshálh Nation is to blame for that, I’m saying it’s a bigger community issue.
“We have a lot of folks [for whom] this is not their traditional territory, who call this place home now, but do not have access to resources for Indigenous people in the way they would if they were living in their hown community.
“And that’s something that’s really alarming and heartbreaking.”
She also pointed to the piece that 59 per cent of people who identified as Indigenous in the count said they had some experience or generational experience with residential schools. “Colonialism and the effects of it are showing up in our community, this is what it looks like,” she said.
• That one-quarter of those counted were seniors aligns with Jaylene's experience. “I can attest to that,” she said. “There’s seniors living in a shelter for up to two years. [Seniors] having to live in a low barrier shelter, who have not had any experience with substances and that lifestyle that goes along with it.”
“Only having a low barrier shelter here means that seniors who are unhoused and have to access shelter end up having to live in that environment, which creates all sorts of issues there for their safety."
• Women are generally underrepresented in homeless counts, said Jaylene. (They made up 31 per cent of the people enumerated in the 2023 count.) “Women in homeless populations often are more adaptable and have different ways of accessing temporary housing options,” she said. That only three in 10 of people experiencing homelessness are women seems low to her. “There's a lot of very vulnerable, but also resilient women who are like really skilled and in meeting their needs in different ways that show up on this count,” she said.
