Battling cancer and attempting to get by on a fixed income in one of the world’s least affordable housing markets, he turned a Vancouver Tim Hortons into his makeshift home. Now his death – while sitting alone at a table of the ubiquitous Canadian coffee chain – has cast a spotlight on the toll the city’s housing crisis is taking on Vancouver’s most vulnerable.

Believed to be in his 70s and known to his friends as Ted, the man was a familiar figure at the Tim Hortons in the city’s downtown. Friends described him as a kind and easygoing man who had lived out the past decade at the 24-hour coffee shop, sleeping and eating at a table near the washroom. Witnesses said he may have spent hours slumped at his table last week, unresponsive, before a passerby alerted staff.

“It is a nearly unimaginable scenario,” said Jeremy Hunka of the Union Gospel Mission. “To have somebody dying for hours in a public restaurant at a table, where customers are drinking their coffee, coming and going, and nobody is noticing this person’s dying breath.” His death has prompted renewed scrutiny of the link between the city’s red hot property market – where the average cost of a detached home hovers around C$1.8m ($1.4m) – and levels of homelessness that have soared to record highs in recent years. The number of homeless in the city is continuing to grow at a pace of about five people a week, said Hunka. “We need more housing, more supports, and more compassion.”(theguardian)...[+]