On March 7, a total of 4,821 people throughout Metro Vancouver did not have a safe and stable home to live in, according to the point-in-time homeless count. 

That’s up 32 per cent from the last time the count happened, in 2020, when 3,634 people were counted as homeless. The largest percentage increases occurred in Delta (159 per cent), Richmond (91 per cent), and the Tri-Cities (86 per cent), while the largest numerical increases are in Surrey (416 more people recorded as homeless) and Vancouver (325 more people).

“It’s important to remember that every number represents a person who lives without housing,” says Lorraine Copas, chair of the Community Advisory Board that coordinates federal Reaching Home funding in Greater Vancouver, in a statement.

Point-in-town homelessness counts rely on a large number of volunteers coordinating on a single night to count and survey the number of visibly unhoused people they can see. For 2023, more than 1,000 trained volunteers across 11 communities conducted the survey in shelters, transition houses, safe houses, hospitals, and police holding cells.

People found in these locations were considered “sheltered” and constituted about 70 per cent. The other 30 per cent are considered “unsheltered,” and were found by volunteers to be staying in places where they don’t pay rent (including outdoors, parkades, parks, vehicles, or couch surfing).

This year, 1,461 people were found to be unsheltered, with 48 per cent of that (701 people) reporting sleeping outside. That’s up from 1,029 unsheltered people in the 2020 count—a 42 per cent increase, indicating the unsheltered population has increased more than the general unhoused population.

In Vancouver, there were 2,420 total unhoused people recorded, including 605 unsheltered people, for an increase of 16 per cent compared to 2020.

The reports are widely acknowledged to be undercounts, even by the people running them. As A.J. Withers, Ruth Wynn Woodward Junior Chair in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at SFU explained for the Straight earlier this year: “Because the city believe they already know who people are and where people are, there are a lot of unhoused people who might not look like what an unhoused person is supposed to look like, or be where unhoused people are supposed to be, who could be missed.” 

People who interact with the shelter system, homelessness services, hospitals, or police are therefore much more likely to be included—meaning the real number of unhoused people is likely far higher.  

“We know there are many individuals experiencing hidden homelessness—including youth, seniors, Indigenous and racialized persons, and members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community—and we know that many individuals in these communities are also underrepresented in these counts,” Copas says. 

Some new questions added to the survey this year aimed to measure the impacts of both the Covid-19 pandemic and ongoing colonialism. Around one in six respondents (15 per cent) reported losing their housing due to the pandemic; and two-thirds (64 per cent) of Indigenous respondents said they had direct or intergenerational trauma from residential schools. 

“This year, the count made inroads into bringing recognition to the ongoing impact of colonial policies that continue to cause incredible harm to Indigenous people,” says David Wells, chair of the Indigenous Homeless Steering Committee of Reaching Home in Greater Vancouver, in a statement.

Indigenous people are disproportionately likely to experience homelessness. Although census data shows only one in 50 (two per cent) local residents are Indigenous, one in three (33 per cent) unhoused people are Indigenous. Additionally, 58 per cent of the Indigenous unhoused population is unsheltered, compared to 25 per cent of the non-Indigenous unhoused population.

LGBTQ2S+ people were also disproportionately likely to be unhoused, with about one in eight (12 per cent) of respondents identifying as part of the community, as compared to about one in 25 (four per cent) nationally.

The vast majority of people had at least one source of income (91 per cent), at least one health concern (85 per cent), and were still living in the same community where they had last had housing (81 per cent). 

Currently, the City of Vancouver uses 2020 homelessness levels to set budget levels for resources and services, and does not seem to have been increasing funding levels in line with the real-world increase in people experiencing homelessness—after throwing out their 2021 estimates and not attempting a 2022 count. The 2023 point-in-count numbers are available to impact the 2024 budget.