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    Whenever you drive by Commercial Drive and Boardway, you may be disturbed by those "window  washing" people who mostly claim as homelessness.   For us, this might be just an unpleasant sine to see but for the society, this is a problems of increasing homeless people.  Open a homeless shelter is one of the way to help them getting away from the street.   The purpose of my project is to locate a best site to build a homeless shelters in Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD).  There are many criteria should be taken into account during decision making but before hand, we need to know some background of homeless people.

Two trends are largely responsible for the rise in homeless people: a growing shortage of affordable rental housing and a simultaneous increase in poverty.  Homelessness and poverty are inextricably linked.  Poor people are frequently unable to pay for housing, food, childcare, health care, and education.  Difficult choices must be made when limited resources cover only some of these necessities.  Often it is housing, which absorbs a high proportion of income, that must be dropped.  Being poor means being an illness, an accident, or a paycheck away from living on the streets.  Two of main factors that account for poverty are less secure jobs and falling incomes.

On the other hand, a lack of affordable housing and the limited scale of housing assistance programs have contributed to homelessness.  The lack of affordable housing has lead to high rent burdens, overcrowding, and substandard housing.  These phenomena, in turn, have not only forced many people to become homeless; they have put a large and growing number of people at risk of becoming homeless.

Other factors that causing homelessness included a) lack of affordable health car: for families and individuals struggling to pay the rent, a serious illness or disability can start a downward spiral into homelessness; b) mental illness: approximately 20% - 50% of the single adult homeless population suffer from some form of severe and persistent mental illness; and c) addiction disorders: high among of homeless population are related to alcohol and drug abuse.
 

• General land use pattern
• Proximity to public transit
• Socio-economic indicators
• Social factors