In an RV outside a B.C. Walmart, a senior dreams of housing

Keith Light, 77, says he spent New Year's Eve trying to get the engine of his recreational vehicle — outside a Walmart in East Vancouver — running to stay warm, while trying to imagine better times ahead.

"I just laid here and visualized B.C. Housing calling me and saying: 'We have a place for you,'" said the former construction worker.

Light has been on B.C. Housing's waiting list for subsidized housing for two years, and every time he contacts the agency, staff ask him to check back in another six months.

He is among a large population of elderly people living in poverty or are on its brink in B.C., where perennially high housing costs exacerbate countrywide cost-of-living woes.

Statistics show people 65 or older in the province are twice as likely as younger adults to be classified as having low income in 2021. But 20 years earlier, it was the other way around. 

Low-income rates among B.C. seniors have almost doubled since 2001, and are almost seven times higher than in 1996, according to government data.

Light once had a home on Pender Island, a 40-minute ferry ride from Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island.

After selling it, relocating to Metro Vancouver and paying off debts, Light didn't have much left, so he bought the RV for $19,000 while living on a monthly pension of $1,900.

Adding to his financial woes are parking tickets, each costing $70. Light has paid some of them and said he's saving to pay the rest.

Advocates for B.C. seniors say rising costs of living coupled with stagnant government retirement incomes are pushing more elders into poverty and homelessness.

The monthly old age pension for people over 75 is up to $784.67, while the guaranteed income supplement for a single person is up to $1,065.47, for a total of $22,201.68 a year.

A 66-page report titled Aging in Uncertainty: The Growing Housing Crisis for B.C. Seniors, published late November by United Way B.C., cited Statistics Canada data showing more than one in six B.C. seniors in 2021 had after-tax low incomes, defined as 50 per cent or less than the median adjusted after‑tax income of private households.

That was a "dramatic reversal" from three decades ago when seniors had the lowest low-income rates of any age group, United Way said.

The report says in 2001, only 8.6 per cent of people aged more than 65 in the province were in the low-income category, compared with 16 per cent of younger adults. By 2021, 15.2 per cent of seniors were in the low-income group, compared with 8.1 per cent of younger adults.