Vancouver sees record number of homeless on streets

A record number of homeless people were forced to live on the streets in Canada's western city of Vancouver, according to the city's annual homeless count released on Tuesday.

The report said there were 1,847 people found living either in temporary shelters or on the street in March, which is about 100 more than last year and 44 more than the previous high in 2014. In 2005, the number of homeless was 1,364.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson called the numbers "very disappointing", given that they come amid a booming economy and after considerable effort from the city.

Robertson pledged to eradicate street homelessness by 2015 when he first elected the mayor eight years ago.

About 60 percent of those counted had been homeless for less than a year, mainly because of the surging prices in the housing market.

A recent study found out that in Metro Vancouver, the price has more than quadrupled to a whopping 813,000 CAD (626,000 U.S. dollars) from 1980 to 2014. The study found it now takes someone in Vancouver 23 years of full-time work to save for a 20-percent down payment for a typical home, compared to five years in 1976.

However, Robertson and other Vancouver councilors attributed the increased numbers to inadequate mental and physical health support, addiction programming and welfare.

"There's a lot of causes for homelessness. We're getting more and more people onto the street that are new to being homeless. That's a big problem. That's upstream causes ... that the city can't control," Wednesday's Vancouver Sun quoted Robertson as saying.

Some say the increasing cost of living in Vancouver, the climate are part of the reason, and some homeless people even prefer to live that way, unfettered by societal norms and rules. Endit