In 2007, a group of homeless people pitched tents in a vacant lot on Main Street near the Georgia Viaduct. A decade later, on April 28, another group did the same thing in the same location.

When the Straight visited the site at 950 Main on the weekend, campers there explained that in 10 years, the region’s twin challenges of homelessness and affordable housing have only gotten worse.

“There is a record-high number of people sleeping on the streets and also a record number of people dying on the streets because of homelessness,” said Maria Wallstam, an organizer with the Alliance Against Displacement.

Both of those claims are accurate.

According to Metro Vancouver's latest report on homelessness, there were 3,605 people living in shelters or on the streets when the last count was conducted on March 8. (Authorities consistently emphasize that these counts miss people and very likely underestimate the actual size of the region’s homeless population.) That’s a 30-percent increase since 2014, according to a report by the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association.

Of those 3,605 homeless people, 2,138 of them were in the City of Vancouver, marking a 19-percent increase since 2014.

Homeless deaths across the province increased by 56 percent from 2014 to 2015 (the most recent year for which data is available). According to a April 26 report by Megaphone magazine, 70 homeless people died last year in B.C., an all-time high.

In a subsequent telephone interview, the Downtown Eastside activist emphasized that there is a provincial election happening on May 9. She expressed disappointment in the Liberal party and the NDP’s apparent lack of interest in homelessness and low-income housing.

“The provincial parties are treating homelessness as if it is a normal and inevitable part of the city, and we need to start challenging that,” Wallstam told the Straight. “It is preventable. It is not normal; it is not inevitable.”

Wallstam said organizers are asking for the provincial government to work with the city and Ottawa to create 10,000 units of social housing to be rented at the welfare-shelter rate of $375 a month for a single occupant. She argued that B.C. has the money for that sort of substantial investment in housing.

“There is no lack of money in British Columbia,” she said. “There is plenty. It is just a question of what they are spending it on, and it is not low-income people right now.”

Wallstam pointed to Liberal tax cuts that she described as favouring the rich.

“Since 2001, the corporate tax rate has gone down from 16.5 percent to 11 percent and the small-business tax has gone from 4.5 percent to two percent,” she explained. “Personal income taxes in B.C. are now the lowest and most regressive in the country.

“What we’ve seen over the last 10 years is tax cuts for the richest people here in British Columbia.”

Wallstam said both the Liberals and the NDP have made clear that they intend to continue with those sorts of polices that favour the relatively wealthy.

The NDP’s 2017 election platform is vague on homelessness but pledges to work with other levels of government to “create an immediate homelessness action plan”. Of note there is the stated intention to also draft a “provincial poverty reduction plan”. B.C. has long been criticized as the only province in Canada that does not have a strategy in place.

The Liberal party’s platform does not include either the word homeless or homelessness. It claims that the Liberal government has created 5,000 new units of “affordable housing” for “those who need them most”. The platform’s section on housing focuses on middle-income families.

The Green party’s election platform is by far the most detailed on housing (as it is on just about every issue). It is also the only one of the three to discuss housing specifically for the working poor and welfare recipient. It states that a Green government would put up to $750 million annually toward the construction of an estimated 4,000 new affordable-housing units per year and would lead a “comprehensive rethink of zoning to ensure it is consistent with government objectives such as the provision of affordable housing”.

The Greens' platform also says the party would “protect existing social housing and reduce operating costs by investing $100 million per year in retrofits and renovations of older units”.

In addition, the Greens’ platform discusses a guaranteed-minimum income and the need to address the challenges of income inequality and threats that technology and innovation pose to job security.

Wallstam noted that despite the campers’ plea for attention they’ve made during the final two weeks of the provincial election, only one politician has visited the lot they have occupied. That is Andrew Weaver, the leader of the B.C. Green party and a candidate for Oak Bay-Gordon Head. He stopped by last Friday (April 28), only hours after the tents there were pitched.

“Both the NDP and the Liberals, they haven’t contacted us,” Wallstam said. “Andrew Weaver did [visit the camp], so the Green party actually has. But we haven’t heard anything from the NDP. Nothing.”