Some B.C. seniors endure a quiet housing crisis

B.C.’s seniors are in a housing crisis, with a growing segment of people over the age of 55 sliding into homelessness for the first time in their lives.

Seniors are too often overlooked in discussions over housing, says Jenny Konkin, who is president and co-founder of the Whole Way House Society, and whose family-owned and operated The Avalon single-room occupancy hotel in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Seniors are a generation that doesn’t like to complain, she says, so they are quietly enduring their growing crisis for housing and support.