Vancouver woman with disability facing homelessness after waiting for B.C. Housing for 7 years

Karen Norton saysshe has been waitingto get into B.C. Housing since 2009.

Her need for housing has become more desperateaftershe was handed an evictionnotice in November asking her to move out by the end of January, so the landlord can undertakerenovations.

"I have no place to go," said Norton, who was diagnosed with primary progressive MS.

"I don't know if I'm going to be homeless, if my belongings are going to be in a storage locker. Idon't know what is going to happen to me," she said.

Norton, once a vibrant character amongst her friends in the music industry, has been housebound for six years.

"It's very, very difficult," she said.

She says her current house near Main and Broadway which she moved into 11 years ago when she was able-bodiedhas two sets of stairs that she can't climb because of her disability.

She has to be carried up the stairs of the house andrequires acane, wheelchair and scooter to get around.

"I have a loving partner and he gets me out once a week to get my hairdone and then for dinner," she said.

Due to her disability, Norton can no longer wash her hair or get in the tub. She spends the entire day in a chair and uses an office chair to motor herself to the bathroom.

Norton says her current residence is completely rundown, has a bedbug problem and admitsit really is in need ofrenovations. She describes her living conditions as deplorable.

She says she has applied to at least 40 different B.C Housing buildings in Vancouver, but there is no estimated wait time on when she will get in.

Tenants are picked based on need, and shemay not even be a priority, says her MLA, Melanie Mark, who haspenned a letter to B.C.'s minister of housing asking her file bereviewed immediately.

"They treat her as someone who has a roof over her head, therefore you'renot in dire need. Yet, she has been living in these circumstances for a number of years and her health is continually being compromised," said Mark.

B.C. Housing saysit can't provide details about Norton's housing history because of privacy rules,but a person at risk of homelessness with a disability is given priority for housing.

Currently, there are 4, 210 applicationsfor housing in Vancouver, 85 per cent of whichare applicants who currently have housing and are looking for alternate forms of housing.

In the letter to the housing minister,Mark wrote that her office sees "one person a day on average with concerns about how long they have been on the B.C. Housing wait list."

Mark said a person in Norton's condition won't be able to survive on the streets.

"She can't go from shelter to shelter with her belongings," she said.

Norton says the thought of being homeless with her disability is frightening.

"Terrifies me. Terrifies me. I have panic attacks about it. Nothing I can do," she said.