The best tool available at the moment for gauging how many people are living homeless in Greater Victoria is the Point In Time survey done by the Community Social Planning Council in March 2025. It almost certainly doesn’t catch everyone, but there’s no other data-gathering going on. We really know so very little about homelessness beyond what’s found out through the point-in-time surveys, a reality that adds to the difficulty of addressing the growing street crisis.
A few details from the survey:
At least 1,749 people were experiencing homelessness on the night of March 25, 2025
318 people were completely without shelter
493 were in emergency shelters, and another 750 were in transitional housing
Almost 40 per cent were ages 39-54
11 per cent were young people under age 30
The health challenges that people identified speak to the complex challenges of those living homeless:
80 per cent were using substances
64 per cent had mental health issues
53 per cent had a physical disability
40 per cent had an acquired brain injury, which speaks to an emerging issue that is the result of people overdosing on opioids and other drugs and essentially dying for a few minutes before being revived with a dose (or multiple doses) of Naloxone
The role of the child welfare system in BC and other provinces as significant contributors to homelessness can’t be overstated. Thirty six per cent of the people surveyed had histories of being in government care, and a third of that group became homeless within a year of losing the support of the child welfare system at age 19.
The health-care system plays another key role. Some 12 per cent of those surveyed – one in eight – reported being discharged from a hospital into homelessness in the past year.
A decade ago, it was uncommon to see people with intellectual disabilities – mental handicaps – living homeless. That has changed significantly in 2025, with 18 per cent of the people in the point-in-time survey identifying as having either an intellectual or developmental disability.
As with the toxic-drug crisis, the majority of people impacted are men. Men accounted for 72 per cent of people living homeless, and account for roughly the same number of the 150 or so toxic drug deaths every month in BC.
What services did people identify as most urgently needed?
Two-thirds said they needed basic medical care
57 per cent said they needed food
51 per cent wanted mental health support
46 per cent needed help with ID
45 per cent were having problems with transportation
43 per cent needed addiction services
Sometimes there simply aren’t enough shelter beds to meet demand. But there’s also a problem with people simply not wanting to go to a shelter, primarily because they don’t feel safe in a shelter or worry about theft. Forty-seven per cent of those not wanting to stay at a shelter said they were concerned for their own safety, and 37 per cent were concerned about theft of their belongings.
Homelessness is a widespread challenge impacting communities all across Canada. According to Statistics Canada’s 2021 Canadian Housing Survey, 11.2% of Canadians, approximately 1.69 million people, reported having experienced some form of homelessness in their lifetime (Statistics Canada, 2023). This includes both absolute homelessness, where individuals stayed in shelters or unsheltered locations, and hidden homelessness, such as couch surfing or temporarily living with others without secure housing.
