Seniors pushed to brink

Photo: The Canadian Press

Seniors Advocate Isobel Mackenzie

Skyrocketing rents and dwindling affordable-housing units in Vancouver are driving seniors to the brink of homelessness, forcing some to couch surf, seek roommates or even live in cars, advocates say.

While the debate over the city's housing crisis often focuses on millennials, people who work with seniors say elderly adults have lower incomes and fewer supports to withstand being displaced from their homes.

"People end up living on the streets, or living in their cars, or crashing with friends, sleeping on the couch," said Linda Forsythe, a board member of 411 Seniors Centre Society.

"That used to happen a lot with young people," she said. "They could tolerate it quite well, and sort of get on with their lives, whereas, with older people, you don't have a chance to make more money. That's the problem."

Seniors are enduring the same rent hikes as other tenants in Vancouver, but have disproportionately lower incomes and higher medical costs. A provincial grant to help elderly renters has not kept pace, and subsidized units have decreased, experts say.

Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters, or SAFER, is a provincial subsidy applied to rent up to a certain cap. The rent cap in the Lower Mainland is $765 a month, even though the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,223, according to the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation.

That means a senior who pays $765 a month rent and earns less than $27,000 a year can receive a subsidy of about $200 a month. But someone paying $1,500 a month in rent would receive the same amount.

Outside the Lower Mainland, such as in Victoria or Kelowna, the rent cap drops to $667.

Over the past decade, average rents have risen 45 per cent, but the cap has only gone up by nine per cent, said Isobel Mackenzie, B.C.'s seniors' advocate.

"The compounding effect presents the stark reality we have today, which is the huge gap between the SAFER cap of $765 in the Lower Mainland and the rent most people are paying," she said.

Mackenzie called on the province to increase the cap to parallel average rents and adjust it annually.

Elderly homeowners also face challenges. Mackenzie said she has asked the province to allow seniors to not only defer their property taxes but also other expenses, such as strata fees or utility costs, and to set up a borrowing fund for major repairs.

The number of seniors' subsidized housing units have decreased nearly five per cent since 2013, while wait lists have grown, she said.