VANCOUVER — At the end of his day, Lucas Philips drives to his home overlooking Spanish Banks Beach in Vancouver, near some of the most expensive real estate in Canada.
But Philips is no wealthy property owner. His home is a Vanguard campervan berthed in a beachside parking lot.
But more people are sleeping in vehicles as a last resort, as they try to stave off full-blown homelessness in the notoriously expensive city. Retired Californian mechanical engineer Alex Mosson, 58, was parked last week at Spanish Banks in a beige recreational vehicle he called his “tiny house." Dean Kurpjuweit, president of Vancouver’s Union Gospel Mission said vans and trailers have become a way for some working people to stay in the city amid high conventional housing costs.
Local residents said in summer and early fall that hundreds of people were living in vehicles at Spanish Banks. Dozens were still there in the fall, even after the City of Vancouver started warning people to move on, although their numbers dwindled with the onset of winter. He lived with a friend, who got "a little tired" of his presence after about a year, and he moved out in May.
But some have been born too late and are now locked out of Vancouver's real estate market or are facing prohibitive rent on even a one-bedroom apartment. “But look, I wouldn’t have chosen that if there was a one-bedroom apartment that I could rent somewhere,” said Tan.
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