A Teacher’s Fall from Hope to Homelessness

A seventy-six-year-old former art teacher from Shanghai, Tom Tang, once dreamed of building a life in Canada — but now he sleeps in a tent in a Richmond park, lost to time and forgotten by society. Once a respected portrait artist in Vancouver, he’s been homeless for over a year and a half, struggling not with addiction or mental illness, but with systemic neglect. His story exposes the crushing reality for elderly immigrants — caught in a web of language barriers, bureaucratic delays, and a housing crisis that’s tripled in a decade. With a two-year wait for long-term care and shelters overflowing, Tang’s quiet resilience — even sharing cigarettes with park drug dealers — is a haunting testament to dignity in despair. He worked hard, lived right, and now, no one seems to know how to help.

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