May 22, 2008

Vancouver - Pivot Legal Society is demanding that the City of Vancouver put place a moratorium on tickets given to people sleeping outside in light of newly released shelter statistics that say homeless individuals, on over 40,000 separate occasions, were refused access to shelters in Metro Vancouver over a nine month period. Over 17,000 of these turn away incidents involved women and families.

“These turnaway statistics are alarming,” said lawyer David Eby of the Pivot Legal Society. “We have bylaw officers, police officers and security guards cracking down on people who sleep outside, but these statistics make it clear that there is nowhere else to sleep.”

The statistics cannot be extrapolated into numbers of homeless individuals, because neither the participating shelters nor B.C. Housing can say whether the same individuals are being turned away from multiple shelters on any given night or whether individuals give up after visiting just one shelter. The statistics on families and women may count families as one person, or may count children as well as parents, making those numbers less certain as well.

“We need a provincial investigation of the real number of real people who can’t find shelter,” said Eby. “We’re calling for a moratorium on police and bylaw officers ticketing people who sleep outside until we figure out whether our shelter system has been overwhelmed by demand.”

There are currently 1,028 known shelter beds in Metro Vancouver, according to the document. The GVRD Homelessness Count indicated that there were 2,592 homeless people counted during its biennial 24 hour count in March of 2008.

Pivot Legal Society released two open letters, one to Sam Sullivan, Mayor of the City of Vancouver and Chair of the Police Board, calling for a moratorium on bylaw and Trespass Act tickets given to the homeless, and one to Rich Coleman, B.C.’s Minister responsible for housing, calling for a formal investigation into the capacity of Metro Vancouver’s emergency shelter system.