Last week, Unitarian Shelter executive director and Nanaimo City Councillor Paul Manly said the shelter scrambled to find an emergency bed for Donna Smith, a 75-year-old woman who showed up following an eviction from her low-income seniors’ housing complex at 10 Buttertubs Dr. in mid-October.
After spending the maximum amount of time permitted at another emergency shelter, Smith was referred to Unitarian, where she is now sheltering, says Manly.
“You don’t know where there are safe places out there in the woods, or out there in the city. You’ve got no tent,” Smith told The Discourse, whose name has been changed for safety reasons.
“It’s overwhelming when that word ‘homelessness’ is thrown into your mind. It created instant traumatic shock for me. I thought, this can’t happen to me. I’ve never lived that lifestyle. I came from a middle-class family, you know? Regular. You don’t know where to go. You start phoning one number, and then they say to phone another number, and all of a sudden you’ve got a sheet of five different numbers, and that in itself is overwhelming.”
Guests in the Unitarian Shelter are required to leave at 7:30 a.m. and not return until 5 p.m. when the facility re-opens. As the weather gets colder, finding things to do outside is a challenge for shelter guests, especially those who are older, and potentially represents a safety issue, says Manly.
“I would say that most of the guests at the shelter are harmless, but there are opportunists in the mix and people are in survival mode and have been homeless for a while and will take advantage of people who are vulnerable,” he says.
“I have trouble with the idea of sending people out into the streets every day to go do — what? Go to the library, go to the mall, go to the recreation centers, find a place to hang out?” Manly continues.
“Often the seniors who end up at the shelter know enough not to mix and mingle with some of the other folks at the shelter… But there are a lot of lonely people who show up at our door, and I always worry about them the most. I worry about people with developmental disabilities, I worry about seniors that show up at our door. So when a 75-year-old woman shows up at the shelter door, that sets off alarms for me. I think about my own aunt, or my own mother and think about them trying to survive on the streets. It’s distressing.”
Almost one in five seniors are at risk of homelessness in B.C., according to Aging in Uncertainty: The Growing Housing Crisis for BC Seniors, a report out this month from United Way B.C.
This is reflected in Nanaimo’s latest point-in-time homeless count, which also points to the reality many older renters are facing homelessness as affordable housing becomes increasingly difficult to find.
As defined by BC Housing, these counts provide a “snapshot” of people experiencing homelessness in a community. Though recognized as a significant undercount, these estimates can provide a helpful window into trends.
This year, researchers counted approximately 96 people over the age of 55 who identify as unhoused in Nanaimo, compared to 67 people counted in 2020. This represents 18.5 per cent of the total of 514 unhoused people counted this year, though it is estimated the actual total is between 800 and 1,000.
The number of unhoused seniors could also be much higher, as many or most seniors are not likely to want to participate in a homeless count, says Andrew Thornton, who helped lead this year’s count and is the research and mobilization lead with the Nanaimo Systems Planning Organization.
The housing issues for seniors are not limited to Nanaimo: The Parksville-Qualicum point-in-time count revealed 25 per cent of those counted were seniors, a similar number to Greater Victoria.
In the Metro Vancouver area, latest numbers show 22 per cent of unhoused people counted were over the age of 55.
The rising cost of living combined with inadequate or fixed incomes contributes to the crisis, the United Way report points out.
For a senior on government benefits to rent an one-bedroom apartment in B.C., they would need to spend approximately 78 per cent of their income on rent.
At the same time, the report also notes that access to affordable housing with rent geared to income is on the decline, while “low-cost private market options are being lost due to skyrocketing rents, evictions, renovictions, and redevelopments.”
Older residents are also vulnerable to losing what funds they have on scams and investment schemes, many executed in an online world that is increasingly complex and difficult to navigate, especially for those experiencing cognitive decline that is often a part of aging.
“We have seen a number of seniors showing up at the shelter and I find it very alarming,” says Manly. “We’re seeing seniors evicted for a variety of reasons, including that the places that they’ve lived in for years have been sold. We’re seeing seniors that have been caught in scams and lose their income and then can’t pay rent and get evicted, and we’re also seeing people with disabilities showing up at our doors and it’s a distressing aspect of the growth spurt the city is going through. Our most vulnerable citizens are ending up homeless.”
Hitting the streets
A variety of factors led to Smith’s eviction from her home at Buttertubs Drive, including erratic and late rent payments, says Smith, though she insists that by the time of her eviction, the rent was fully paid up.
Retired and on a pension, over the preceding year Smith says she attempted to supplement her income by investing significant amounts of money into cryptocurrency, which rendered it difficult to access.
“It’s not that I’m against that type of investment, I just had a poor start on it at that particular time, and by the time I wanted to make some withdrawals, it was one circumstance after another along the way, month after month,” she says. When she attempted to explain her situation to the representatives at Ballenas Housing Society, who run her complex, she claims she was not offered help.
“Any tenant that finds themselves in difficulties are offered any and every resource we know to be available that could possibly assist,” says Andrea Blakeman, chief operating officer at Ballenas via email, who adds this is standard practice for all tenants. “Support services are voluntary and cannot be forced on anyone. There are times when we have worked with tenants for years, to no avail, and as a landlord, the only choice left is to end tenancy. It is always the very last option when all others have been exhausted.”
When the notice to end tenancy for unpaid rent arrived at her door, Smith says she was confused and ignored it. According to provincial law, which lawyer Robert Patterson at the Tenants Resource and Advisory Centre (TRAC) previously described as “incredibly brutal,” if a tenant does not dispute an eviction notice or pay the outstanding rent within five days, they can be evicted — even if the amount owing is very small.
In cases like these, if the amount owing isn’t settled within a specified five-day notice period, there is little to no discretion for arbitrators to cancel the notice and allow the tenancy to continue, says Patterson.
This case went to the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) and they were granted an order of possession, at which point Smith recalls that she did submit a response in writing, but the eviction was granted regardless.
“After the dismissal of my case, the following morning I had a knock on my door. I wasn’t even dressed. I had just finished my coffee. They came and told me that basically that I was living there illegally and had two days left to get out. And if I didn’t, then they would be calling the bailiff to come and get me out,” she says.
“I’m 75. I’m on a pension, a fixed pension. How does one go about, with two days notice, to afford a move when it’s very difficult to even get movers in the first place, even if you can afford them. Within two days I had to find a rental. And how do you do that? The whole thing was ludicrous.”
Packing what she could into her set of suitcases, Smith left virtually everything else behind and headed to the shelter at Samaritan House.
“I left all my dishes and pots and pans and all my casserole dishes. The most important part — I left all my spices and my recipes. You know, things you’ve been collecting over decades. I only took my files, specific ones that I knew I was going to need or want, and the rest I had to leave. Pictures on the wall that I’ve had since I was 21 years old. And my bedroom furniture,” she says.
For a tenant in affordable housing to find another rental within two days is nearly impossible, says Patterson, and when a landlord pushes through an eviction on that timeline it virtually guarantees homelessness.
As a response, TRAC is currently advocating for arbitrators to use discretion around the default two-day minimum when granting an order of possession, and when necessary, allow for longer deadlines for tenants to move out.
Hope in the dark
When Kristin Brooker started her job at Nanaimo Family Life Association (NFLA) as its seniors’ housing navigator in the summer of 2020, she had no idea the level of crisis she was about to wade into.
The organization had just partnered with the Seniors Housing Information and Navigation Ease (SHINE) program, and she figured she would be helping older residents access information to maintain their current housing, make plans for housing as they age or assist them in getting mobility aids.
“I had no idea how bad things were, and that older adults were falling through so many system cracks on a daily basis,” she says. “I was like, oh my God. There’s no money. These folks are on low income. Pensioners have no chance.
“My mental health took a serious dive,” she says. “Even people without any barriers, it’s just their income and that’s it.”
“So many — dozens of clients — sleeping in their cars, going from friend to friend to friend all over the Island. Older women trading sex. It’s not so overt but you know, ‘Well, he lets me stay there, so if I just kind of do what he needs me to do…’ These are women who have never experienced that kind of vulnerability before. It gets super [dark].”
At the same time, Brooker was dealing with what she describes as the “shocking” and “brazen” behaviour of some landlords. One tore down walls inside the unit, One moved an entire newly immigrated family into the other room of a two-bedroom suite, while the residents were still living there.
One older client who was isolated, “severely unwell mentally” and suffering from trauma was evicted from a Nanaimo-based retirement facility into her car, and no one flagged it or sought help for her, adds Brooker.
An example of the many obstacles older renters face is that housing providers like Ballenas, the largest affordable housing operator in the city, require potential tenants to apply for housing online.
Though some advocates work to help seniors learn to navigate the online world, it can also paradoxically open them up to an unfamiliar, confusing and sometimes predatory environment.
This was the case for 64-year-old Judy Myers, who lived in a Townsite Road apartment complex for more than ten years with her husband. When he died from cancer in the fall of 2017, she faced rent increases and the loss of her husband’s income. On disability herself, in 2019 Myers decided to move in with a friend in Parksville.
The living situation there also soon changed, however, and the price she was paying for a room doubled to $800 a month. In February, the two argued and her roommate evicted her with 24 hours notice. Though Myers was a co-tenant, she wasn’t listed on the lease, so she couldn’t challenge it through the RTB.
For the next five months, Myers struggled with being unhoused, bouncing between a stint at her son’s house in Port Alberni and sleeping in her car.
A few months prior to her eviction, Myers met a man on an online dating site and through talking about their lives — he said he had lost a spouse to cancer — she fell in love. They spoke for about three or four months before he asked for anything, she says.
“He lost his wallet and was supposed to send his daughter some money. And I didn’t have that much but I agreed to send her a little bit to help her get over the problem, and then he didn’t ask for anything else for another month or two,” says Myers.
The stories and excuses continued, and over a period of seven months, Myers ended up pawning her belongings and borrowing money from a friend and gave the man approximately $7,000, after which he disappeared, she says. The turmoil and expense definitely contributed to her ending up homeless, she says.
“I felt so stupid,” she says, but when she reported the situation to the RCMP they helped her realize it had happened to other people, too. “Don’t ever send money, no matter what they say.”
After staying at the Unitarian Shelter for five months, in August shelter workers helped Myers find permanent housing on Boundary Crescent with Ballenas that is geared to income.
“I’m never leaving. They’ll have to pry my cold, dead hands off the doorway,” she says with a laugh.
Canary in the coal mine
Three weeks ago, Donny Anderson managed to find an apartment at a supportive housing facility in Nanaimo after living on the streets, in a wheelchair, for about a year.
A former sea captain, 62-year-old Anderson had lived in Port Hardy for 35 years and became homeless when the apartment complex he lived in changed owners and he was renovicted.
Now clean for just over a year, he said one of the things he found most surprising was that despite what many people think, there are a lot of people on the streets — especially older folks — who are not homeless because of substance abuse issues.
“I mean, it shouldn’t matter. There’s people out there because they spend all their money on booze and dope and everything like that. But there’s people that don’t, and still can’t get housing,” he says.
“There’s people who are just honestly homeless, for whatever reasons, trying to get themselves in and can’t do it. I’m not making a difference between either one, everybody deserves housing. But we need more housing, and we need more people to advocate for the people that need housing. That’s no secret, of course.”
Anderson credits his current stability to the workers at the Unitarian shelter, who found him his current home. But as he adjusts to a more comfortable living situation and awaits a knee replacement, he worries about the others left out on the streets as winter sets in.
One of the biggest barriers to maintaining or increasing the existing housing stock of lower-rent housing is the financial incentive to evict or renovict longer-term tenants whose rents are still relatively low, and then hike the rent for the next tenant.
Despite the fact that the population of seniors increased by 20 per cent from 2017 to 2022, according to the United Way report, access to subsidized rent-geared-to-income housing remained flat. During this same time period, BC Housing states that it has seen a 45 per cent increase in the seniors subsidized housing waitlist.
The report also estimates that the province stands to lose approximately 30,000 units of subsidized rent-geared-to-income housing by 2033, when operating and subsidy agreements with federal and provincial governments expire. Of these units, 51 per cent house seniors.
The situation in the private housing market is no better.
“We’re seeing landlords wanting to get rid of long-term tenants,” says Carol Pelletier, who took over from Brooker as the head of NFLA’s SHINE program. “Long-term tenants are at risk of being evicted because the rents they pay are low, and the landlords are able to ask any rent they want between tenants. If B.C. would legislate [vacancy control] like other provinces, especially Quebec, that might keep older people in their homes longer.”
Another factor worth examining on a local level is the value that non-profit housing providers offer the community and assessing whether they really are helping the lowest-income and most vulnerable residents, says Pelletier, who has seen an excess of evictions from non-profit organizations like Ballenas that don’t make sense.
“This is a nonprofit society. They’re dealing with people willing to talk things out or have some kind of mediation, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. They seem very hard-line,” she says.
While working with seniors at NFLA, Brooker said it occurred to her that the establishment of a local navigation centre where older residents could access in-person assistance with things like rental applications, or receive advice about online safety and access resources would also go a long way towards helping the situation.
“They can be minimally staffed, but with lots of volunteers that can help folks on every level, whether it’s municipal, provincial or federal,” says Brooker, who now lives in Prince George and is pursuing her master’s degree in counselling. “Seniors and people with barriers don’t know where to start. They want to talk to a person, they want somebody to sit down with them and show them things, fill things out with them.”
She says she still struggles with the burnout and toll that this work took on her mental health.
“I do feel like a canary in the coal mine a lot. And I still feel that way when I talk to people about housing issues,” she says. “I get so worked up at how easy it is for us to live in our own little bubbles and not see it.”
