For three years, Riley Johnson says he has struggled with homelessness and complex mental health challenges — calling every resource he could find to try to access support.
But after years of searching for help in his hometown of Victoria, B.C., Johnson, 31, feels no closer to stability than he did after first finding himself homeless in the wake of a job loss and breakup in 2021.
“It seems like once you don’t have housing, then there’s just nothing that anybody can do for you,” said Johnson, who has been met with long wait lists and few answers when seeking help from government and charitable resources across the city.
Unable to afford housing while making minimum wage and paralyzed by the years-long wait to access long-term support, Johnson, who has borderline personality disorder, says the situation has escalated his issues with depression and suicidal thoughts, sometimes landing him in emergency care.
Mental health and housing industry insiders say he’s one of many people let down by systems overwhelmed by demand from those priced out of the housing market and seeking mental health services.
B.C. NDP Leader David Eby and B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad have pitched duelling proposals for expanded involuntary care as a solution to help people struggling with mental health and addictions who are apprehended by police get off the street.
“Folks have been doing the survival circuit, trying to get help, but there is not enough out there, and it’s not accessible in a timely manner,” said Chris Forester, the executive director of Island Community Mental Health.
“A lot of that help starts with just being safe in your own home and then being connected to true wraparound support, and there isn’t enough of either that can provide people with enough consistent, ongoing support for them to change their ways of being.”
B.C. Housing’s list of people in B.C. waiting for subsidized housing has more than 34,000 applicants, according to the most recent data from June. Supportive housing, which provides additional support for people struggling with mental health and addictions, has more than 8,000 applicants waiting.
B.C. Housing could not provide the CBC with an average wait time for these lists, as they are not linear, and applicants are prioritized based on need. A spokesperson also noted that people can apply for both types of housing and that not everyone on the registries is living unsheltered.
‘It’s just hopeless’
Johnson had been living in Vancouver with his partner, where he worked at restaurants and bakeries and as a freelance makeup artist for films. But in 2021, when he lost his job and his relationship ended, he found himself unable to afford any of the rental listings he saw.
He moved back to his hometown of Victoria, where his mother still lived. He was able to stay in his mother’s dining room, a temporary shelter that prevented him from having to sleep on the streets.
That temporary solution has become Johnson’s reality for the last three years. In that time, with housing insecurity taking a serious toll on his mental health, he’s sought care about five to six times in the last three years at the Royal Jubilee Hospital psychiatric emergency unit.
Each time, he says he was discharged within less than a day. Johnson feels the staff were dismissive of his mental health challenges and the danger he poses to himself due to his housing instability being a significant factor in his mental health.
He said they gave him info sheets with market housing and hotel options that are more than he can afford.
“It’s just hopeless because you talk to these people, and they say straight up, like, ‘I know it’s supposed to be my job to help you, but there’s just actually nothing,'” said Johnson.
“But then the wider public thinks that the mentally ill and impoverished are so spoiled here. It’s like, there’s such a disconnect.”
Pandora Avenue in Victoria, which has often had many tents set up along its sidewalks, was the target of police enforcement this summer after a paramedic responding to a call was swarmed by a group of people. (Kathryn Marlow/CBC)
Island Health has said doctors and care teams work together to decide when to discharge patients and that resource sheets like the ones Johnson received are prepared by care teams. They did not provide an updated copy of these sheets when requested by the CBC.
Johnson is currently waiting on B.C. Housing’s subsidized housing list, which he has to check in with every six months to keep his application active.
Demand outpacing services
Heidi Hartman, B.C. Housing’s associate vice president of supportive housing and homelessness said the province has built or begun to build 40,000 new units of housing since 2017 but that the demand has only continued to outpace the number of available units.
It’s a similar situation with the province’s care for complex mental health conditions, according to Jonny Morris, CEO of the Canadian Mental Health Association in B.C. He says there are “deserts of care” across the province for people without a general physician, particularly those in rural and racialized communities.
“So many [complex mental health conditions] are absolutely treatable, like completely treatable. It’s just that we have a gap between the person and the treatment, whether it’s bipolar illness, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety,” he said. “The real opportunity that sits in front of us is how to close the gap between treatments and people.”
CBC host Gregor Craigie asked candidates in the Victoria-Beacon Hill riding about how they would cut down the long wait times for housing and mental health services in a debate on Thursday morning.
B.C. Green Party Leader Sonia Fursetenau advocated for psychologists and counsellors to be covered under the provincial health plan, while Tim Thielmann, the B.C. Conservative candidate, said his party would take some of the demand off the health-care system by funding care through private service providers.
Grace Lore, the riding’s NDP incumbent, said that she would not support any privatization of the health-care system and referenced her party’s record of investing in non-market housing and crisis response teams.
The Canadian Mental Health Association of B.C. has released 31 recommendations ahead of the election for key changes to improve mental health care in the province, which Morris says all the parties have received and reviewed.
The recommendations include making counselling and psychotherapy universally accessible and publicly-funded, scaling up subsidized housing for low- and extremely low-income people, reviewing the Mental Health Act, improving the experience of in-patient care, and mandating that health authorities spend at least 10 per cent of their budget on mental health services each year.
Meanwhile, Johnson has recently started a new job as a tailor and hopes to get into selling hair care products — and that someday soon, it might be enough to help him take steps toward stability.
However, he’s lost hope that support for his mental health and housing challenges will come his way.
“If you cannot get help in the capital city of British Columbia, where can you get help?” he said. “Like, it’s Teslas ‘n tent cities. It’s freaking insane.”