on a plan to eventually create an affordable housing development targeted for seniors, people living with disabilities and young families struggling with affordability.Īs the federal election enters its final days, Star Vancouver took a look at where the federal party platforms stand on this increasingly critical issue.Įlectoral projection data project, which aggregates polling and other data across the country, has Conservative candidate Marc Dalton leading in the Pitt-Meadows–Maple Ridge riding with a projected 32.2 per cent of the vote. 9, the city announced it had partnered with the Co-operative Housing Federation of B.C. The root cause, he claims, is almost exclusively drug addiction and he prefers a treatment- and abstinence-based approach. Maple Ridge Mayor Mike Morden has said from the beginning that he doesn’t support low-barrier housing to address homelessness.
MAPLE 2019 KEY INSTALL
In March, the province announced it would install a low-barrier 51-unit modular housing development on provincially-owned land - the second of its kind in the city - despite city council’s refusal to accept it. Increased police enforcement was demanded to address the problem. Local business owners and residents in the downtown area pleaded for action, saying the number of people living outdoors was hurting their businesses. Residents at the camp say they faced repeated harassment by so-called “ridge-ilantes,” including threats, violence, and intimidation. The camp eventually grew to house around 50 people, and its existence pushed tensions over the visibility of homelessness to the forefront of public debate.
In 2017, a handful of people experiencing homelessness banded together with anti-poverty activists to create a tent city called Anita’s Place, as a way to protest the city’s lack of affordable housing. The city of Maple Ridge has, for the past two years, been embroiled in an often-bitter dispute over how best to tackle homelessness and housing in the city. Perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in the riding where Hoflin lives: Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge. has focused heavily on climate change and the Trans Mountain pipeline, recent polling shows that the ongoing housing crisis is actually the top concern among the province’s voters.Ī poll conducted by Research Co.’s Mario Canseco at the end of September found that housing, homelessness and poverty is the top concern (24 per cent) among voters in B.C. I do believe that Alouette Heights and supportive housing has saved my life.” “I’d probably be one of the statistics of people who died. “If I didn’t find Alouette Heights when I did, I know I would have ended up on the streets,” Hoflin said.
He applied for a space at the Alouette Heights program in Maple Ridge, and he got one and has been there for the past couple of years. He heard about a supportive housing program geared specifically toward people like him at risk of becoming homeless. Hoflin says when he tells prospective landlords that he’s on disability they assume - wrongly - that “Oh, he must be a drug user.”Įventually, Hoflin got lucky. “If I were to try and move into a suite that charges $1,700 a month, that’s out of my range,” he says.īut there’s another complication: The residential rental housing market in cities across the Lower Mainland is one of the tightest in the country, and prices are rising.Īccording to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s 2018 figures, the residential vacancy rate in Maple Ridge, where Hoflin has lived most of his life, was 1.6 per cent - not the worst in B.C., but tight enough to mean that landlords can afford to be exceptionally picky.
Covering his health-related costs is a significant challenge, he says.
Hoflin has type one diabetes and stage four kidney disease. “I just couldn’t find a place that was willing to accept a single guy on disability,” Hoflin said. He turned to friends and family, expecting to couch-surf for a short while until he found an apartment he could pay for on his own. Josh Hoflin says the Lower Mainland’s lack of affordable housing could easily have killed him.Ī breakup left Hoflin living alone and unable to afford his rent in Maple Ridge, B.C.
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