Prince George will once again participate in the Canada-wide Point in Time Homeless Count once again.
It takes place on April 18th and volunteers will survey individuals who are either staying in shelters, short-term housing or sleeping outside.
United of Way Northern BC CEO Roberta Squire took part in last year’s count and is back again for the second installment.
She explains what was most shocking from the count in 2016.
“The fact that there are more men between the ages of 30 and 50 on the street was quite interesting to me and that helps us kind of pinpoint the services we need to help provide that focuses in on that demographic.”
“What we found interesting is the number of people with a mental health issue that are finding themselves on the street just because of their inability to cope or to deal with their situation in a productive manner. It kind of gets pinballed back and forth between different agencies because they don’t have that mental capacity to get themselves in a better place.”
Squire adds finding low-income housing seems to be a logical solution, but it’s not the only thing we should be looking at.
“It’s not just dealing with them by finding shelter, it’s dealing with them by finding them support that can help them with their health situation.”
“Our lives don’t go in a straight line and a lot of times we need to find out and analyze in order to improve something, if you don’t practice golf, you’ll never get good at golf – we need to go out there, we need to find those answers and talk to those individuals to even start to come up with solutions.”
The 2016 event found that 28% of the city’s homeless population moved to Prince George within a 12-month span.
Forty-two percent of respondents said a family breakdown, conflict or violence was the reason for being homeless for the first time.
Anyone wishing to volunteer should contact [email protected].
Here are some graphics pertaining to the 2016 results.
One hundred and thirty-one respondents are Chronically homeless (homeless for 6 months or more of the past year) while 85 are Episodically homeless (homeless 3 or more times in the past year)
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