Driving to work a few days ago, I spotted a young woman on the sidewalk outside the Tzeachten mall on Promontory. Like a lot of university students, she had her hair a messy bun and was wearing comfy sweats. If it weren't for the shopping cart covered in tarps and loaded high with what I could only guess were belongings, I would have thought she was getting a latte on her way to class.

Who is homeless? We know that studies show people older than 55 are the largest growing demographic of first-time homeless and they don't know how to survive on the streets. Are we now seeing young adults losing their homes? 

Getting and keeping housing is even harder than it was when my kids were young. Families face rents and mortgages that I couldn't pay today. Young people living in their parents' basements put their dreams on hold because they can't afford to buy homes.

Finding affordable rentals is much harder than it was when government built affordable housing in the 70s-90s when the federal government stopped funding the program. Even then, co-operative housing projects kept running for years until most were squeezed out by aging infrastructure or economics.

Take a turn off Wellington Avenue just east of beautiful District 1881 and you see scenes that rival Vancouver's downtown east side. People with nowhere to go, pushing shopping carts and riding bikes clearly need permanent help. The sadness is not confined to that area, but spreads out all over the city, extending into Sardis and even up to the hillsides. 

Housing is a human right. Housing people saves taxpayers money by reducing crime, health care, child welfare spending, and emergency services costs. Most people will choose having a home over not having a home and we can work with other government levels to find solutions like tiny homes, laneway homes, secondary suits, affordable housing projects, and rental assistance. We will have to get creative.

Also important will be lobbying the federal government to invest in housing in Chilliwack. We need to bring back the co-op housing model.