The majority of small towns in northern BC have been gradually depopulating for decades, due to economic pressures similar to those in the Rust Belt of the US. (And plus, it's just damn cold up there, so it's hard to be homeless if you do end up homeless.) Their populations have to be going somewhere.
Yes, homeless people don't actually sit on the streets of e.g. Quebec City, begging until they can fund a trip to Vancouver, with the aim of living on the streets here instead.
But people are often in some kind of unstable living situation wherever they are, and find out about some job offer, or housing offer, in Vancouver, that lures them to come here for a chance at a more stable living situation. But after coming here (and spending what little capital they have to do so), their job offer falls through, or it was just a seasonal job, or a job with very tenuous stability (e.g. in construction); or the housing they found was a sublet in a rent-stabilized building, but the building owner then figured out how to work around this by "rennovicting" all the tenants so they could jack up the rents; etc.
I live in the East Hastings area. I speak to the people wandering the streets pretty often. I get the impression that many of these folks had a "stable living situation" for a year or two after coming to Vancouver. But this stability was an illusion. They didn't have the earning power to support themselves long-term in Vancouver's high-cost-of-living environment.
These folks are used to smaller low-cost-of-living towns, and just want to escape a failing small town with no economic opportunity; but they don't tend to have job skills that are highly-valued in dense urban areas (e.g. doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc.) These people can still move — but not to high-cost-of-living Vancouver. (Even the highly-employable "service class" of Vancouver, can't afford to live in Vancouver; they have to commute in from quite far away.) Rather, these folks would be much better off moving to another small-ish, lower-cost-of-living, but non-failing town in BC. Prince George, Vernon, Mission, etc.
Prince George as non-failing? Have you been there? I've never seen so many zombified homeless junkies wandering aimlessly than I have in Prince George. Not in Vancouver, San Francisco, Portland, or Seattle. Not in any other city. Prince George is horrific. Honestly the worst town or city I've ever had the displeasure of visiting. All of the 'normal' people inside businesses had thousand yard stares, shell shocked, and asked why I would even visit their town.
>these folks would be much better off moving to another small-ish, lower-cost-of-living, but non-failing town in BC. Prince George, Vernon, Mission, etc.
That's an interesting idea, but the smaller BC towns also have their own homeless issues. I don't think their municipal gov would be open to the province providing relocation resources to these people.
Also East Hastings draws vulnerable in, and has an iron clad grasp on them. These people might not want to move due to friends/nearby support non-profit/substances.
Finally, some of them have drug addictions after they move to Vancouver. There should be resources to help them exit first.
The small towns in BC don’t have their homeless issues, because without services, you either die or are in a bus to Vancouver. A common route for homeless people in Montana is to wind up in Spokane first and then Seattle later, since you can’t really survive in MT at all without a job, and while Spokane used to provide a bunch of flop houses (my grandfather owned one), those are gone now and it is too cold to live unsheltered there in the winter. Cities do pick up much of a national problem because of the social resources they can provide, and accordingly only national solutions have a chance of working.
Yes, homeless people don't actually sit on the streets of e.g. Quebec City, begging until they can fund a trip to Vancouver, with the aim of living on the streets here instead.
But people are often in some kind of unstable living situation wherever they are, and find out about some job offer, or housing offer, in Vancouver, that lures them to come here for a chance at a more stable living situation. But after coming here (and spending what little capital they have to do so), their job offer falls through, or it was just a seasonal job, or a job with very tenuous stability (e.g. in construction); or the housing they found was a sublet in a rent-stabilized building, but the building owner then figured out how to work around this by "rennovicting" all the tenants so they could jack up the rents; etc.
I live in the East Hastings area. I speak to the people wandering the streets pretty often. I get the impression that many of these folks had a "stable living situation" for a year or two after coming to Vancouver. But this stability was an illusion. They didn't have the earning power to support themselves long-term in Vancouver's high-cost-of-living environment.
These folks are used to smaller low-cost-of-living towns, and just want to escape a failing small town with no economic opportunity; but they don't tend to have job skills that are highly-valued in dense urban areas (e.g. doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc.) These people can still move — but not to high-cost-of-living Vancouver. (Even the highly-employable "service class" of Vancouver, can't afford to live in Vancouver; they have to commute in from quite far away.) Rather, these folks would be much better off moving to another small-ish, lower-cost-of-living, but non-failing town in BC. Prince George, Vernon, Mission, etc.