‘Disheartening’ trend sees more families, seniors reach out for homelessness supports [Video]

One of London’s homelessness response services says it’s been tracking an alarming trend over the past few months: the number of new people experiencing homelessness increasing rapidly, including more seniors and families with children. 

London Cares serves people experiencing chronic homelessness and runs a number of highly supportive housing units in London.

“We were chatting in our all-staff meeting just earlier this week and we were surprised by some of the data that we were seeing,” said Lierka Vandepoele, the outreach manager at London Cares. 

Numbers shared by London Cares say the people accessing their services who say they’re newly homeless rose from 14 in February to 54 in April. 

The number of families reporting being homeless for the first time rose from 10 to 26 over the same timeframe.

Rising homelessness has been a concern across Ontario and all of Canada for a number of years. A report from …